




Book._jC^_i_5. 
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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 







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^tntfreli JRirtilanli 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE. Illustrated. 
THE BOY-EDITOR. Illustrated. 

THE HOME-COMERS. Illustrated. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


t 




(p. 220) 


IN THE DOORWAY OF THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


THE 

OLD DILLER PLACE 

A Story for Young People 


WINIFRED'^ KIRKLAND 

0 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
(Cbe 0iuer3^ille Cambriiige 
1914 


PZ_7 

O 


COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RBSRRVED 


Published November /Q14 


/ 


• • 


'^01/ 13 1914 

©aA388377' 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


In the Doorway of the Old Diller Place ’ 

(p. 220) Frontispiece 

“For the Old Place, Robin,” Lucy pleaded . 30 
“ Won’t you stay here and be my Hired Man? ” 70 ^ 

“ It’s the Best Plan that was ever thought of ” 120 


.t 


■ > 


V 


THE 


OLD DILLER PLACE 

CHAPTER I 



^HE departing visitor strode angrily 


Jl along the bricked walk that ran be- 
neath the maples, and, not pausing at the 
open gate of the driveway to look back 
toward the house, clambered, muttering, 
into his buggy, and was off. At the same mo- 
ment, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, from the front 
piazza, old Robin’s cane smote the drowsy 
June silence. Rat-tat-tat! The sound grew 
angrier with each blow. Old Robin himself 
had become inarticulate, but you could hear 
his ‘‘B-r-r-r, g-r-r,” roared forth through 
clenched teeth. Rat-tat-tat! However reluc- 
tant, you dared no longer neglect that sum- 
mons. Up from the strawberry beds on the 
right, old Danny came shambling, a pail of 
strawberries in his hand ; out from the chum- 


Q. THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

ing in the spring-house at the foot of the knoll 
on the left, old Davy shuffled. They stood at 
the piazza steps, two lean old men in overalls, 
and lifted frightened faces beneath broad 
hats, faces with mild, vacuous eyes and 
tremulous lips agape above the straggling 
beards. 

The little man in the rolling chair regarded 
them a moment with his eyes so bright and 
darting that one could not see their color. 

‘‘Well, what good do you think that 
does?’’ he jeered at their attitude. “Why 
don’t you do something about it ? Why don’t 
you two sprint after him, and upset the buggy 
and brain the horse, and kill the thieving ras- 
cal and carve and quarter him ! That would 
be something like! Why don’t you do it? 
That’s what I’d do! But what can I do? 
And they know it, the dogs ! They come and 
dare me on my own porch, my own porch, 
knowing I can’t roll ’em in the duck pond! 
And what are you two going to do about it. 
I’d like to know? And what’s going to hap- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 3 

pen if you don’t do something about it, I’d 
like to know?” 

At their vacant stare, — sole answer, — he 
growled, ‘T’m sure I don’t know either! I 
don’t know what’s going to happen to you or 
to me, or to — ” But at that muttered name 
he grew redder than before, clenched his 
teeth more fiercely, and again roared his 
‘"B-r-r-r, g-r-r-r” while his cane beat franti- 
cally. 

Well, Lucy would have to come now, much 
as she hated leaving her preserve kettles. 
Although the cane was quieted when Lucy 
stood in the door, the roaring continued, but 
Lucy was looking at old Danny’s pail of 
strawberries. Gently she said, ‘‘Danny, I 
told you not to hull them. They wilt in the 
sun when you do that. Did n’t I tell you not 
to hull them, Danny?” 

Old Danny hung his head. “Thought it 
would save you work,” he murmured. 

“They ’re spoiled, Danny,” said Lucy 
patiently. 


4 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

Suddenly old Robin thought he detected 
guilt in Davy’s eye. “Davy, have you 
salted yesterday’s butter again?” he de- 
manded. 

“Thought it would save Lucy,” old Davy 
excused himself. 

“Mrs. Porter’s butter ’s spoiled, then,” 
murmured Lucy. 

“So much work for little girl to do,” the 
two old men spoke together in apology; Lucy 
would always be a little girl to them. They 
stood looking up at Robin and Lucy, diso- 
bedient, loving, vacuous, the two old men, 
as always. Looking at them Robin’s smile 
suddenly flashed across his square, smooth- 
shaven face, and he shook his head while he 
dived into the pocket of the coat too large for 
him, and brought forth a handful of licorice 
drops, which he divided between the two old 
hands stretched out. 

“Run along, boys,” he said, “and don’t 
dare do it again.” 

Thus, many times a week he dismissed 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 5 

them after he had summoned them to be wit- 
nesses of one of the rages that required the 
family for audience. For the hundredth time 
old Robin said to Lucy, ‘‘Now, why did they 
have to lose their wits both together just be- 
cause they were twins? And why did they 
have to lose them at all, just along of getting 
old ? I ’m five years older, and I Ve still got 
mine."" 

Looking from one to the other of the sham- 
bling old figures, the mother tenderness came 
into Lucy"s young eyes, — the twins made 
her so much trouble! And Lucy knew that 
the twins had never had their rightful wits, 
for so Myra Drum and Martha Beardsley 
had told her, although it had always been 
Robin"s pet pretense that his brothers had 
been like other people. 

Now Robin carefully arranged a scowl, 
frowning up at Lucy. “ Pity you could n"t 
come when I knocked I I might be murdered 
on my own porch, and you would n"t leave 
your strawberry preserves!"" 


6 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


‘‘They're going to be the best preserves I 
ever made!" cried Lucy. 

She had perched on the arm of Robin’s 
wheeled chair, as usual, to Robin’s apprehen- 
sion lest she should set it rolling over the edge 
of the sloping piazza ; but old Robin loved 
this excitement. 

Lucy touched with light little hands the 
gray curls that ringed the bald spot on 
Robin’s head, then with two firm forefingers 
smoothed the horizontal lines on his forehead 
and pressed a little kiss upon it. Nodding in 
the direction the visitor had taken, she 
asked, “Was he another of them, Robin.?’’ 

“ He was,’’ thundered Robin. “ Oh, I wish I 
had a gun 1 Why did I never learn to shoot ? ’’ 

A glance at the shrunken body, the size of 
a boy’s, surmounted by the splendid man’s 
head, might have revealed the fact why 
Robin had never learned to shoot. 

He growled on. “B-r-r-r! they’re oil and 
sugar the first time they come, but the last 
time, and the time after that!’’ 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 7 

Which one was he, Robin, the incubator 
man, or the Russian clover man, or the pat- 
ent duck pond, or the black Minorca eggs, or 
the self-acting churn, or the fall strawberry 
plants — 

‘‘Heavens, girl, are there so many? I 
never counted!’’ 

“I’ve counted,” said Lucy. “Robin, do 
they all want to be paid at once, before we 
kill the spring chickens, before the raspberry 
money comes in?” 

“It’s now, now, now, with all of ’em!” 
Then Robin’s manner changed. “Better go 
back to the preserves, girl!” 

But Lucy waited, wide-eyed, for what she 
knew must come next. 

“It will take the lower pasture this time,” 
old Robin said at last, his face averted. Sud- 
denly he groaned, “One of these days it will 
take the roof over our heads!” 

For Robin and for Lucy it was as if a piece 
of their own bodies were lopped off each time 
a fresh slice of the old Diller place was sold to 


8 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


satisfy one of the agents who had wheedled 
Robin into buying some new device for em- 
ploying the few acres left. 

‘'O Robin!’" gasped Lucy at his words. 

‘‘Lord forgive me!” cried Robin at her 
face, “what’s happening to me to frighten 
you like that! Lucy, girlie, you know I was 
just talking! You know that ’s my trouble, 
too much talk ! Why, we ’ve got the old place 
still, the best of it, and we’ll keep it, too! 
Look here, girl,” — and with his stick he 
brought within reach of his hand a poultry 
catalogue that had fallen to the floor, — 
“see here, these fancy Dorkings! Ever see a 
rooster like that? Going to try ’em! Man 
tells me there’s nothing like fancy breeds 
these days!” 

“Robin, don’t you think the Plymouth 
Rocks are better? We’ve got plenty of them. 
Don’t let ’s get any more chickens just now, 
Robin.” 

For the first time there had come into 
Lucy’s eyes in looking down at Robin the 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 9 

same expression they had for the twins. She 
had grown very pale. Old Robin’s words had 
whirled her back from the happy coziness of 
the present, from the dear old house, and the 
sweet June afternoon, to the harassment and 
the terror of old forgotten days. ‘‘One of 
these days it will take the roof over our 
heads!” It was not the words that had 
frightened her, it was that Robin had said 
them, — Robin, whose love had roofed in 
Lucy’s happiness as securely as the old house 
had sheltered her, — Robin, the dauntless 
and the capable, who now sat examining the 
pages of that seductive catalogue with eyes 
feverishly bright. Lucy looked down at him. 
It comes to all of us just once in a lifetime, 
the realization that the person that we love 
best on earth has grown old. Suddenly out of 
that first blind terror for herself there came 
to Lucy a desire as blind, but boundless, to 
keep the old place a shelter for Robin, 
always, always! 

It was well that Robin did not look up. He 


lo THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


would have seen on Lucy’s face the same 
harried look it had been his pride for seven 
years to feel that he had driven away forever. 
And alas for old Robin, and his feverish 
eyes, and the desperation of his projects to 
make the tiny farm pay, were they not due to 
his fight against his dwindling acres and his 
increasing years, to keep the old place a 
shelter for Lucy always, always? 

Gradually, as Lucy’s light hands played 
with his hair, old Robin’s fingers relaxed their 
clutch upon the poultry catalogue and the 
fire flared out in his eyes. Lucy, too, in com- 
forting some one, had brought back their 
usual calm to her lips, lips parted, looking as 
if they were always about to smile, which, 
however, they rarely did, out-and-out. 
Robin had begun to whistle: — 

“ Brief life is here our portion. 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care.” 

Sometimes he whistled stormier tunes. 
Sometimes, too, when he thought no one was 
listening, all alone in the summer dusk, he 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE ii 

would whistle very low, ‘‘Mine ain coun- 
tree,’" — not often, for at sixty-eight Robin 
had no mind to think himself an old man. 

The drowsy peace of the afternoon was 
about them. However sharply fear might 
clutch their hearts sometimes, they were not 
given to brooding or to worry, old Robin and 
Lucy. And they still had the old place, and 
they still had each other. 

Robin was dreaming back to the day seven 
years ago when that dusty old highroad down 
there had brought him Lucy. Six in the 
morning it had been, June, but raw and 
rainy, the clouds sullen and low, the village 
wrapped in mist. Old Robin, always early, 
was sitting out on his porch alone. He was 
thinking how dull the house had grown in the 
years since his mother had died. Before that 
Robin had always been busy with singing 
and shouting and jokes and waggery; a man 
can do that much for a wistful little mother, 
even if a man has the body of a thirteen- 
year-old, crippled to boot. Robin looked off 


12 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


toward the muddy old road, leading from 
the hills on the left to disappear across 
the hills on the right. Robin had never 
traveled that road. That morning he was 
whistling — 

“From Greenland’s icy mountains, 

From India’s coral strand,” 

as being the hymn best suited to the bold 
buccaneering thoughts within him, for old 
Robin was bored that morning, bitterly 
bored. Then, as he watched, slowly there 
emerged over the hill and slowly wound 
down a sorry little caravan, three red wag- 
ons of a shabby little circus. Four wet and 
ragged ponies came trotting after, some 
draggled dogs followed, that was all — no, 
not quite ! Full ten minutes behind came an- 
other wagon. Unlike the rest, the driver sat 
erect, not huddled, and unlike the rest 
looked in and up at the old Diller place, 
leaned forward and peered up beneath the 
avenue of maples skirted by a bricked path 
on either side. Then suddenly the weary 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 13 

horse turned in at the gate, and the battered 
red-and-gold equipage trundled up and 
halted just below the knoll, at the terrace 
steps. Now old Robin saw that the driver 
was a woman, straight and gypsyish, and 
that she was dismounting and lifting some- 
thing tenderly down from the high seat. 
Straight up to Robin she came, half drag- 
ging, half carrying a little girl of ten. The 
woman sank into a chair, propping the child 
on her lap, and bending on Robin great black 
eyes, keen as knives. 

‘‘She’s sick,” she said. “Nothin’ much the 
matter, nothin’ much, ’cept that the life’s 
killin’ her. The joltin ’s too much for her this 
mornin’. I thought mebbe you had a little 
warm milk. She’s sort o’ faint.” 

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat ! — until the twins 
came scurrying from the kitchen. 

“Milk!” ordered Robin, — “warm, and 
coffee, too, strong and hot.” 

“Come, Luce,” said the woman, “see 
where we are! Open your eyes.” 


14 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

Then at last the great eyes opened in the 
little white face. 

‘‘See/’ said the woman, “she always looks 
like that, yet ain’t nobody ever hit her, as I 
know of, — not since I’ve been with this 
show, anyway! Yet she always looks like 
that!” 

The woman’s eyes never ceased to dart 
their razor glances everywhere, chiefly at 
Robin himself. The milk came for Lucy, and 
the coffee for the woman. 

“ I don’t know where she came from,” the 
latter went on after a while, “but I know 
she’s not made for the tumblin’ they’re 
learnin’ her, nor for the travelin’ neither. 
She’s different!” 

Presently the stranger rose, placing the 
little girl quietly in the chair vacated. 

“Could I leave her here a bit, a few hours, 
maybe, to rest, till I can come back for her ? 
It’s all right. Luce. You’ll be safe here with 
him.” At the step she turned, “And you’ll 
be safe with her, too!” she said to Robin. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 15 

The three old men had somehow got 
Lucy in upon the horsehair sofa in the Long 
Room. She slept all day, and all day Robin 
sat beside her. It had not proved a gloomy 
day after all, for at eight o’clock away went 
the clouds and out burst the cheeriest royal 
red sun Robin had ever seen. Just once Lucy 
half awoke, looking about her with strange 
eyes, and seeing Robin asked, “Home?” 

“God willing, yes!” said Robin. 

The circus woman never came back. She 
would not have got Lucy if she had come. 
Yet old Robin had never overcome a fear 
that some one might come for Lucy, had 
never conquered a premonition that one day, 
just as mysteriously as it had brought her, 
the old road would carry Lucy off to a world 
where Robin could not follow to take care of 
her; or, perhaps — and at the thought a teas- 
ing grimness touched the old man’s lip — 
would carry old Robin himself away to a 
world where he could not take care of Lucy. 

Yet this afternoon in full security they 


1 6 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


were sitting together on the sagging old 
porch, gazing forth through the arching 
honeysuckle trellised against the pillars, 
down toward the road beyond the lower 
fence. From time to time neighbors went 
jogging along in buckboard or buggy. Auto- 
mobiles — for the road was one that con- 
nected several summer resorts as well as two 
distant cities — whirled by in a cloud of 
dust, bearing strange people, so different 
from themselves. 

Do you wish we had some of their money, 
Robin?” murmured Lucy. 

‘‘I do!” responded Robin heartily. 

Occupants both of automobiles and of ru- 
ral rigs turned to gaze up through the arching 
maples to the cool, shabby old house on the 
shady knoll. One car did halt at the gate al- 
ways open, and actually make as if it would 
have turned in, but at a querulous ‘‘No, no!” 
from a purple-veiled lady in the back seat, it 
went on to the village a mile beyond. 

Young Ally Holmes went bouncing by in 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 17 

his buckboard, and through his hollowed 
hand shouted a far greeting up toward the 
porch. Jacob Simms, close after, with his 
usual grimness, did not glance up at the 
drive. 

‘‘Shouldn’t think you would look this 
way, Jake,” growled Robin. “He’s made me 
a good offer on the lower pasture, but that 
gives him no right to pry into my affairs, look 
as worried as if they were his, and ask me 
how I ’m making out this year ! I ’ll have none 
of his impudence!” 

“Not impudence, Robin,” soothed Lucy, 
“any more than Mrs. Beardsley’s asking me 
why I did n’t have a new suit this spring, or 
Myra Drum’s offering to make a new white 
dress for the LF.A. picnic, if I could manage 
to get the material.” 

“Impudence!” stormed Robin; “I’d like 
to know if the village over yonder thinks it 
owns you, Lucy!” 

“Do you mind, Robin?” 

“No-0-0, 1 suppose not. I reckon the 


1 8 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


whole town has had a hand In raising you. I 
don’t mind so long as nobody. gets you away 
from me.” 

‘‘Nobody ever shall!” cried Lucy; “but, O 
Robin, look, that auto has come back from 
the village and is turning in here!” 

With his last words saddening his lips, 
Robin bent his darting eyes upon the myste- 
rious motor-car, upon the face of the young 
man who was halting his shining red car at 
the terrace steps precisely where the shabby 
red circus wagon once had stood. 

In quiet peace as on that other morning, 
the old place lay about the strangers. Below 
the terrace the lawn ran in daisies and but- 
tercups down to the road, and in the shade of 
the maples by the gate a Jersey cow browsed. 

A faint breeze stirred the ivy that trailed 
from the urns standing on either side of the 
terrace stpps of cracked mossy flags. The 
same breeze went singing through the grove 
of pines that on the right of the knoll shaded 
the house. Great unkempt spheres of box- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 19 

wood stood below the piazza steps and, 
stretching the length of the piazza, ran a bed 
of pansies bordered with mignonette. The 
bees went droning in and out among the 
honeysuckle and the air was sweet with 
blended odors, honeysuckle and box and 
mignonette and the sharper pungency of 
Lucy’s strawberry preserves. From the stone 
spring-house on the left, splashed with much 
whitewash about the door, came the slap- 
slap, slap-slap of old Davy’s churn. 

On the porch were old armchairs and old 
cushioned rockers black with age, and in the 
hall through the wide door one saw other 
dark old chairs, a shining floor spread with 
braided rugs, a broad staircase with white 
shafts and dark rail. Through the opposite 
hall door, also wide open, the back yard lay 
green and bright in the sun, and thence came 
the drowsy cluck of hens and the occasional 
quack-quack of a duck. 

The elder of the two gentlemen in the front 
seat had jumped out, as had also the slim 


20 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


young lady in the back. Both were carefully 
assisting the purple-veiled lady to dismount. 
“I hope this satisfies you, Laura, said the 
gentleman. 

‘‘Fm sure that depends on what we can 
get here. Elise, unfasten this veil. It’s insuf- 
ferably hot.” 

Elise put back the veil from the discon- 
tented blond face, tucked up the gold-gray 
hair beneath it, readjusted a pin in the lady’s 
collar, shook the dust from her traveling- 
coat, all with a lady’s-maid deftness. 

‘‘ I ’m insufferably thirsty. Make them give 
us something cool at once, Hugh. Motoring 
tires me so. I wonder why we are always 
motoring.” 

“Because the hotel tires you so,” replied 
her husband; “because everything tires you 
so. Ernest, where are you? What are you 
about ?” For the young man had stooped to 
something about the machinery, and was 
hammering away with slim, capable hands. 

“He has to see to the machine, uncle,” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 21 


Elise excused him; adding aside, ‘‘Ernest, 
don’t poke. It always makes uncle cross.” 

The dark, boyish face appeared above the 
side of the car. “Anything about me that 
doesn’t make uncle cross.?” he muttered. 
Ernest glanced toward his uncle as he was 
just mounting the terrace steps with his wife 
upon his arm, and the boy’s eyes were trou- 
bled, and the usual half-conciliatory smile 
was upon his handsome face. 

“Hurry, Ernest,” repeated Elise, tapping 
the ground with an impatient brown boot. 
She was all in brown, — brown silk coat, 
brown bonnet with knots of brown thistles at 
the sides, brown gloves, — as always, in 
faultless stylishness from head to foot. This 
fact struck Ernest for the hundredth time as 
he glanced at her, not yet ceasing to hammer. 

“How do you do it, Elise?” 

“Do what?” 

“Manage to look as if you’d always just 
stepped out of Paris — on nothing at all?” 

“Oh, that! That’s easier than some other 


22 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


things ! ’’ the girl replied tersely. “ Ernest, do 
come!” 

They turned up after the others, the 
brother and sister appearing much alike, ex- 
cept that Elise was thin to sharpness, that 
her voice was staccato, while Ernest drawled, 
and that in distinction to his slow grace of 
movement, her manner had a nervous ten- 
sion overlaid by a determined tact. 

‘T say, Elise, this place makes me feel 
creepy!” 

“Creepy!” Elise turned in surprise. 

^ “It’s so homey!” he explained. 

Elise smiled ; it was so beautiful when, once 
in a while, she and Ernest did feel the same 
about things. 

Then sharp and low came her uncle’s 
voice, addressing Ernest, “You would n’t 
have poked if there ’d been any lovely yoiing 
lady in sight on that old porch. I see only a 
little girl. And that blue calico type would 
never suit your type!” 

“Juliet Poole’s my type!” responded 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 23 

Ernest nonchalantly. But unseen a quiver 
ran along his lips, not at his uncle’s words, 
but at the eternal rasping irritation his voice 
always had in addressing Ernest. Was there 
any pleasing him? Ernest wondered. It 
would n’t have mattered if only Ernest had 
not so wanted to please him! 

Of the stranger’s conversation old Robin’s 
sharp ears had caught only “ If there ’d been 
any lovely young lady in sight.” They made 
him regard with still more suspicion the dark 
boy among those four invaders standing at 
the piazza step. 

‘‘Good-afternoon,” the older gentleman 
began, — he was a man all silver gray, coat 
and cap, hair and eyes, and his voice had a 
fine silvery inflection; “we are looking for a 
place where — ” 

But Lucy had slipped from Robin’s chair. 
She stood beneath the arch of honeysuckle, 
the little lady of the house, giving them wel- 
come. Behind her lay the old hall, all sunny 
green at the other end. Lucy’s blue skirts 


24 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

were not yet of grown-up length. Her sleeves 
were rolled up above round elbows. Her 
hair, ash-colored, dusted with gold, had its 
braids drawn around across the parting. Her 
face was an oval, pearly touched with pink. 
Her lips were parted in their half-smile. Her 
gray eyes with their jet lashes were as deep 
and as grave as a child’s. 

‘‘How do you do?” said Lucy. “You are 
hot and tired, are n’t you ? Won’t you sit 
down and rest? It is always cool up here.” 


CHAPTER II 


H OW quiet it seems to-night!’’ said 
Lucy. 

Old Robin looked up at her as she sat on 
the porch step, her cheeks flushed, her eyes 
strangely bright, her hands clasping her 
knee, forgetting the lapful of pansies just 
picked. 

‘‘No quieter than usual,” answered Robin. 
“I wonder where they came from,” mused 
Lucy, “and where they were going to.” 

“The road brought ’em and took ’em, — 
may it keep ’em, tool” 

“Why, Robin, did n’t you like them?” 
“Did you?” 

“I thought they were very nice.” 

“They liked you all right, Lucy, — one of 
"em, at least! Which of ’em did you like 
best?” 

Flushed, preoccupied, Lucy responded 


126 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


promptly, ‘‘The young lady. None of the 
girls in the village look like that. I don’t 
look like that, either, do I ? Was n’t that a 
pretty dress under her coat? I suppose she’s 
very rich. But, Robin, — ” 

“Go on, Lucy!” 

“They talked as if they were going about 
all the time. If I were very rich I ’d stay at 
home, would n’t you?” 

A moment Robin’s restless eyes sought the 
road he had never traveled, then came back 
to the little girl on his old porch beneath the 
honeysuckle : “ Y es, I ’d stay at home, Lucy 1 ” 

“Robin!” 

“Yes.” 

“Do they call hotels ‘inns’ in England?” 

“Yes,” answered Robin, out of much 
knowledge of old novels. 

“The lady talked about inns all the time. 
She did n’t like the hotel in the village much, 
did she?” 

“Better not tell folks over yonder all she 
said,” chuckled Robin. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 27 

‘‘ But I don^t see why she scolded so about 
it. I don't think the hotel expects to make 
tea for people in the middle of the afternoon. 
But my tea was good, was n't it, Robin ? 
Your gentlemen liked buttermilk better, 
though. And was n't it funny that they 
liked rye bread and butter better than cake ? 
I was so glad I'd just baked. And, Robin, 
did n't they eat lots of strawberries and 
cream? And all the time she was eating, that 
lady kept scolding about ‘no inns, no inns,' 
and ‘this wretched country.' Do you suppose 
she's an American, Robin?" 

“Rather!" 

“Robin!" Lucy turned about sharply, 
spilling some pansies, and lifting to Robin 
a face all flaming bright with some confi- 
dence. 

“Yes, Lucy, out with it! I've seen some- 
thing in your mind ever since that auto 
cleared out, whirr and racket and young 
fellow and all." 

But Lucy turned back, watching the road 


28 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


without speaking, and Robin, skilled with 
children, said nothing now, waited. 

Playing with the pansies, Lucy meditated, 
“ I don’t think that lady was very nice to the 
girl when she tried to make her cheer up by 
saying, ‘Why, auntie, I ’ll have to run over to 
England and buy an inn and bring it back to 
America, and run it for your benefit and for 
all dusty autoists. Just think of the money 
I ’d make ! ’ Don’t you remember how sharply 
the lady said, ‘Elise, I wish you’d stop talk- 
ing about making money. I’m sure you 
have all the money you need, and nothing to 
do!”’ 

“And then,” chuckled Robin, “it was, 
‘Elise, fix this,’ and ‘Elise, fix that,’ and 
‘Elise, where’s my handkerchief?’ If Elise 
has nothing to do, Mrs. Auntie keeps her 
pretty busy doing it! ‘Nobody seems to 
notice the sparks in the young lady’s 
eyes.” 

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think 
they’re very happy with each other. I did n’t 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 29 

think so when I was showing them about the 
place. Robin, what did you and the gentle- 
man talk about while the rest of us were out 
looking at the ducks?’" 

‘‘He’s all right,” said Robin heartily. “We 
got on all right after the first. At first he 
seemed to be kind of studying about my hav- 
ing wheels for legs, and began to talk gently, 
seemed to me, but I got him off that with a 
bounce! After that we talked about Pick- 
wick and Peking — he’s been there, made 
me feel as if I’d been there, too. He’s been 
round the world.” 

“He has lots of money, I suppose.” 

“He’s got some other things, too. I don’t 
envy him! He seemed glad enough to sit 
still. His wife kept you on the jump, I no- 
ticed. We talked of other things, too. After 
a while we talked of raising chickens and 
raising young folks. I said I’d had pretty 
good luck in raising other people’s young 
ones, though I guessed I ’d had good stock to 
begin on. He said he’d had some experience 


30 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

in raising other folks’ children, too, although 
he’d none of his own.” 

‘‘ But he was awfully mad when you took 
the young man for his son, — ‘Not my son, 
my wife’s nephew!’ ” 

“He wanted the young fellow to think he 
was mad. I’m not so sure he was mad, 
though!” 

“I don’t think they’re any of them very 
happy together,” sighed Lucy; then, “Robin, 
have you any idea what they were talking 
about when they stood together at the ter- 
race steps I mean when they kept talking 
low and nodding and motioning back toward 
me, just before they went away; just after 
I gave them the pansies, and asked them to 
come again. Can you guess what they were 
talking about?” 

Robin threw back his head and laughed, 
“You were too much for ’em,” he chuckled, 
“you were too much for ’em, little girl!” 

“What do you mean, Robin? What did 
they mean?” 



‘‘FOR THE OLD PLACE, ROBIN,” LUCY PLEADED 




THE OLD DILLER PLACE 31 

*‘How should I know what they meant, 
dearie?’’ said Robin gently; “I couldn’t 
hear.” 

Then suddenly Lucy sprang up, and, 
perched on the perilous chair-arm, suddenly 
she poured forth all the excitement in a 
breathless voice that broke sometimes, that 
planned and pleaded, too; at last, ‘‘O Robin, 
may I ? She said it would be just the place 
because of the road. Robin, may I?” 

Old Robin gazed at her with a strange baf- 
fled look on his face, ‘‘You think I’m an old 
man, don’t you, Lucy?” 

“No, no, no!” 

“You think you’re grown up, don’t you?” 

“No, no, no! For the old place, Robin,” 
pleaded Lucy. 

“You think I can’t, Lucy?” 

“No, no, Robin; but may I? Robin, why 
don’t you say something? What are you 
thinking?” 

“Thinking if I want any more red wagons, 
with horses or without, stopping down there 


32 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

at the terrace steps. That’s what it would 
mean, more autos, and tall young fellows in 
’em. Lucy, what did that young fellow talk 
about when you were trotting ’em over the 
place.?” 

‘‘Why, I can’t remember that he said a 
single word. But, Robin, may I do it?” 

“ Is this what you ’ve been thinking all the 
time since that red machine went away? Is 
that all you’ve been thinking?” 

“Yes, and — what I always think about, 
when I think, I mean ; I ’ve been just thinking 
about you, Robin.” 

Looking into her great gray eyes, he saw 
that it was true. “ I guess I ’ll have to let you 
do it, Lucy,” he conceded at last. 

On many a day old Robin Diller and Lucy 
talked about their autoists of the red car, but 
the autoists did not talk about old Robin and 
Lucy. It was not until two weeks later that 
it came out, what each of the four had been 
thinking since that afternoon. 

Forty miles from the old Diller Place there 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 33 

is a famous summer resort. In the most ex- 
pensive room, in the most expensive hotel, 
one thunderous July morning at ten, Elise 
was arranging her Aunt Laura's hair. Mrs. 
Cope lifted her hand-glass languidly in silent 
scrutiny. 

Elise waited with difficulty, trained to pa- 
tience though she was. Besides, those low 
voices in the next room, voices to which her 
sisterly ear was preternaturally acute, were 
kindling mutinous lights in her eyes. She 
tried to keep her voice calm, but she had to 
speak at last. 

‘‘What do you think of it, auntie?" 

“I don't think you fix the back quite so 
well as Celeste used to." 

“I did n't mean your hair, auntie. I mean 
what do you think of what I've just been 
saying?" 

“I think you might have chosen a better 
morning on which to annoy me. You know 
my head aches. Whoever put such an absurd 
notion into your head, Elise?" 


34 the old DILLER PLACE 

‘‘I think you did yourself, auntie/’ 
When?” 

‘‘Two weeks ago.” 

“Two weeks? That must have been about 
the time we stopped at that queer old farm- 
house that ought to have been an English inn 
— which makes it all the more annoying that 
we can never go there again.” 

“Can’t we?” 

“Go a second time and demand food and 
drink from perfect strangers without offering 
to pay for it ! I never knew your uncle and 
Ernest to be so absurd. You know how I 
urged them there at the steps, but your uncle 
simply would not offer money to the old man, 
nor would Ernest offer it to the little girl ! So 
absurd to be afraid to offer money to people 
like that!” 

“Could you have offered money to people 
like that — yourself, auntie?” 

“ I ? It was n’t my place to pay them. De- 
cidedly we can’t go there again. It’s absurd 
there should n’t be a place in this part of the 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 35 

country where one can ask for a cup of tea 
and pay for it!’’ 

“Why, auntie,” Elise began eagerly — 
“that’s just exactly what I mean — ” 

“ Elise, not another word about that 1 Will 
you consider your position?” 

“What is my position, auntie?” 

“Are n’t you received everywhere as if you 
were my daughter?” 

“Y-e-s, I suppose I am so received.” 

“Will you kindly consider what would be 
my position if it were known that a niece of 
mine were engaged in menial labor ? — By 
the way, Elise, have you dusted the braiding 
on my new coat?” 

“Yes.” 

“Elise, do you and Ernest lack for any- 
thing that other young people of your posi- 
tion in society have?” 

Some words from the next room drove the 
flame to Elise’s cheeks, a high, burning red. 
but she held her voice level. 

“I don’t mean, aimtie, that you and uncle 


36 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

have not been very kind to us since we were 
little, but now that we are grown up, it 
seems to me better that we should not be a 
burden to you any longer/^ 

“A burden, Elise! You know I could not 
do without you!” 

A moment the girl’s eyes changed, there 
was a new light in them as they studied the 
face in the mirror before them, while Mrs. 
Cope’s eyes were still intent upon her hand- 
glass. 

“ Could n’t do without me, auntie ? ” Elise’s 
voice trembled. 

‘‘You know perfectly well, Elise, that no 
maid could do for me what you do.” 

“Oh!” Elise’s voice was low but firm as 
steel. “I think it is time Ernest and I were 
independent, auntie. I think — I think per- 
haps Celeste would come back to you!” 

It was perhaps the July sultriness that had 
brought to a crisis the interview that Elise 
had half heard, half guessed, on the other 
side of the door. It had once more become 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 37 

necessary for Ernest to ask for money. If his 
uncle really wanted him to have the social 
success he appeared to value, why did he 
make the necessary funds so difficult to ob- 
tain ? The process of securing pocket-money 
had lately seemed more formidable than 
ever, just as for some reason, that summer, 
hotel rooms seemed stuffier than ever; as, for 
that matter, the very country around Ray- 
wood seemed stuffy, too, for all its famous 
tennis courts and golf links. Ernest felt par- 
ticularly bored over beginning his summer 
campaign, — those endless tennis tourna- 
ments ! But his uncle always came to watch 
Ernest play ; always watched afterwards, too, 
when Ernest went about among all the peo- 
ple. Popularity came easily enough to a 
handsome young man, accustomed from 
childhood to hiding a good deal of heaviness 
beneath a graceful manner. 

His uncle’s voice, really silvery, had its 
grating irritation that morning. 

“Well, how much does that come to?” 


38 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘I’ll have to have new tennis flannels if 
I ’m to play in the Raymond-Exton tourna- 
ment with Juliet, and trot her about for the 
day — that’ll take something — it’ll take a 
fifty, uncle.” 

“It generally does, I notice. Here!” 

It was not the mere obtaining of a bit of 
blue paper that was hard ; it was what always 
came after. 

“How long do you think this sort of thing 
is going to keep up, young man?” 

“I — I don’t know, uncle.” 

“You’re through college now, you know. 
What next?” 

The slim young figure in the hotel leather 
chair held itself sternly from squirming. 

“I don’t know, uncle.” 

“What are your classmates doing?” 

“They — they ’ ve most of ’em got fathers.” 

Mr. Cope laughed sharply. “Well, it ap- 
pears, as far as checks are concerned, an 
uncle’s as good as a father.” 

“I didn’t mean that,” said Ernest. At 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 39 

twenty-one why would his lips sometimes 
quiver ? ‘‘ I meant that the other fellows have 
gone into their father’s offices or banks or — ” 

‘‘And you’d like me to take you into my 
bank, would you?” 

Ernest’s eyes dropped. “I didn’t expect 
it, uncle.” But how he had hoped for it he 
could not say, not so much for the sake of 
the money and the independence and Elise, 
but because it was the sort of thing fathers 
do for sons. 

“I shall not take you into the bank; not 
till you know something more than tennis. 
You consider that you do, I suppose? Is 
there anything you think you could do, may 
I ask?” 

Ernest smiled uneasily. “Nothing, I sup- 
pose, unless I made some use of my hands.” 

“Ernest, look at me!” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Do you think I want a nephew of mine to 
do anything with his hands?” 

“I beg your pardon, uncle; I was n’t really 


40 THE OLDDILLER PLACE 

thinking of it, of course. I know you would n’t 
like Elise or me to do anything.” 

A curious grim little smile played about 
Mr. Cope’s gray mustache. There were some 
moments of silence during which the sharp 
gray eyes never left Ernest’s face. 

‘‘You found something to do with your 
hands the other day, did n’t you? You were 
clever enough in helping that little blue 
calico girl with her tea-serving. I confess I 
was astonished at the sort of attention you 
paid her.” 

“It — it meant nothing, uncle.” 

“I suppose not,” — a curious ring in the 
voice, — “I should hardly expect a young 
gentleman of your upbringing to be at- 
tracted by a little rustic like that!” 

“Why,” blurted Ernest, “I thought you 
liked her yourself, uncle.” 

“I!” 

Ernest blundered on in bewilderment. “I 
thought you felt pretty friendly to the old 
chap, too!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 41 

*‘I! Friendly! Do you consider that a 
word that people of our class apply to people 
of that class?’’ 

“But, uncle, you — ” 

“Ernest, you utterly surprise me. I could, 
of course, be civil to the old man, — a clever 
old fellow, by the by; made me feel as if I’d 
known Pickwick in person! But I regret, 
Ernest, that you misinterpreted my manner. 
Friendly! Allow me to make myself clear in 
saying that I do not expect to be ‘friendly’ 
with people below me, nor expect you to be, 
either; and don’t let me hear of your ever 
cultivating any calico rustic ! Is it possible 
you did not feel her beneath your notice?” 

Mr. Cope’s eyes had a strange, enigmatic 
glitter, a glint of hope. 

“Why,” stammered Ernest, shutting tight 
within himself the memory of that afternoon, 
“it was just that everything seemed pretty 
nice there that day!” 

“ Is that all you have to say for yourself on 
that subject ? ” Mr. Cope’s eyes dared him to 


42 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

say more, but the hope died out of them as 
Ernest answered, — 

“Yes, uncle. I’ll remember how you feel, 
now that I understand.” 

“You do understand? You understand, 
therefore,” — there was still that enigmatic 
expression in Mr. Cope’s eyes, still the irony 
that Ernest did not fathom in his voice, — 
“that I do not wish you to cultivate people 
beneath you, that I wish you to remember 
my position and your own, just as I do not 
wish to hear you refer again to degrading 
labor.” Coolly the gray eyes looked Ernest 
up and down with something of wistfulness, 
something of scorn. 

“By the way, no relation of the old man’s, 
that little girl, — adopted, I understand. I 
told him that I, too, — I told him that I had 
no children; that’s true, I suppose, Ernest.” 

To that scorn in the gray eyes Ernest re- 
plied, “I don’t suppose I’m much good to 
you, uncle. You think me a good-for-nothing 
beggar?” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 43 
‘H doV’ 

‘‘But, uncle,” — Ernest plunged to it 
desperately, — “what is it you want me to 
do?” 

“You’ve money enough to do nothing, 
haven’t you? You’re content to take it, 
aren’t you?” Then suddenly the look of 
longing in the gray eyes, and a changed 
voice, “What do I want you to do? That’s 
something I want you to find out for your- 
self!” 

It seemed hard to Ernest that he should 
have to listen to one of Elise’s lectures on this 
selfsame day, but Elise drew him resolutely 
into one of the little tete-a-tete parlors after 
luncheon. 

“I say, Elise, Juliet and I were going to 
practice for the tournament.” 

“Juliet! Juliet! And all the rest! I wish, 
Ernest, you’d pay a little attention to your 
own sister sometimes!” 

“Well, what’s your trouble, Elise? I’m 
sitting down and listening.” 


44 the old DILLER PLACE 

^'Ernest, I overheard this morning, most of 
it! You might have overheard, too, what 
Aunt Laura said to me, although perhaps you 
would n’t have cared, but I care what uncle 
says to you!” 

‘‘Come, Elise, you’re always down on 
uncle.” 

“Because he’s always down on you!” 

“Well, I should think we’d both be used 
by this time to what both our relatives say 
to us!” 

“I shall never be used to it! Ernest, how 
can you ever take money from uncle after the 
way he talks to you ? ” 

“I’ve got to take money from some one, 
have n’t I? What can I do?” 

“Do? Do anything! I should think after 
the way uncle talked that you’d be out 
breaking stone on the road by this time! I 
should ! Oh, Ernest, I don’t understand you ! 
Can it be possible — oh, I wonder ! — that — 
that the way we ’ve been brought up has been 
too much for you? Oh, can’t you feel the 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 45 

way I feel ? — that you and I have just got to 
go away and do something!” 

‘‘There’s nothing we can do, Elise, so long 
as uncle — ” 

“There are a hundred things we can do! 
Oh, Ernest, if you feel that way, if you do 
feel that you’ve got to take money from 
some one — why, then you’ve got to take it 
from me! For I can’t have uncle talk to my 
brother the way he does!” 

“Money from you! But you have n’t any 
money, Elise!” 

“I’ve a little, I’ve saved it, enough to 
start — what I’m going to start! And I’ll 
make money ; I know I can ! Ernest, will you 
come with me and help me ? We could have 
some day the little home we used to talk 
about. Will you, Ernest?” 

“See here, Elise, I know you’re all worked 
up to-day, but Aunt Laura does n’t mean 
what she says half the time. As for uncle, 
I ’m blessed if I ever know what he means ! 
But as for schemes for going to work. 


46 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

you know perfectly well they’re impos- 
sible.” 

‘‘I’d like to know why!” 

“ Simply because uncle would never allow 
it.” 

“Do you think I’ll ask him.?” 

“We owe him everything; we can’t do any- 
thing he would n’t approve of.” 

“ How do you know he would n’t approve ? ” 

“From what he says. So far as I can un- 
derstand anything in this situation, I under- 
stand that uncle does n’t want me to do 
anything so long as he’s able to support me. 
And if he does n’t want me to do anything, 
why, surely he could n’t want a woman to, 
and so you must n’t think of it, Elise.” 

“I intend to do it! The one point this 
morning, Ernest, is — have you enough grit 
to leave all this and come and help me do it ? ” 

“With uncle’s disapproval, no!” 

“ How do you know he ’d disapprove ? Will 
you help me to do it?” 

“ I don’t care to, Elise.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 47 

‘‘Then I’ll do it alone!” 

“Do what, might I ask?” 

“ I was going to tell you what, but I ’m not 
going to tell you now.” 

“I hope to goodness it isn’t anything 
people will have to know about, — uncle’s 
friends or auntie’s, any of the people around 
here. It would make uncle wild.” 

“You’ll see!” 

“ Elise, what has put this into your head so 
suddenly?” 

“ It is n’t sudden. It’s years old! It’s two 
weeks old anyway!” 

“Two weeks — that was the day — ” 

“The day we stopped at the dear old farm- 
house.” 

“Don’t see how that could have suggested 
any wild scheme to you.” 

“Oh, it was so real there! I’m so sick of 
our makeshift existence, all the time pre- 
tending to be what we’re not! Those people 
were so real and so happy!” 

“That was a nice little girl, wasn’t it?” 


48 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

suggested Ernest, thinking to divert the 
conversation. 

‘'Was that all you saw at that old place, 
Ernest, — ‘a nice little girl’?’’ 

“Well, wasn’t she that? What did you 
think of her?” 

“What I thought of her has nothing at all 
to do with what I ’m talking about. And I 
don’t want to hear about your thinking of her 
either!” 

“You shan’t! No danger!” And for a 
second time that day Ernest locked his lips 
on his impressions of Lucy. “But why 
not?” 

“Because I want you to think about me 
and work and making a man of yourself. Oh, 
I wish anything, anything would make a man 
of you, Ernest; — I mean” — a fleeting smile 
caught on her lips, a fleeting caress touched 
his shoulder — “I mean I wish I could!” 

“Oh, come, Elise; I’m sorry about every- 
thing, but this conversation is n’t very amus- 
ing, is it? And Juliet is waiting.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 49 

“Oh, Juliet, and all the rest! If any other 
girl asked you to do anything, you’d do it 
just for good manners, Ernest; you’d help 
another girl, but you won’t help your own 
sister!” 

“Elise, you know well enough what I 
think of you!” And the great light came 
into his eyes. 

“I know you won’t help your own sister!” 

“I can’t. I’m afraid of uncle. I can’t tell 
what he wants.” 

“Perhaps what he wants is that you 
should n’t be afraid of him!” flashed Elise. 
Then after a moment’s silence she added 
wearily, “ I don’t believe you and I shall ever 
understand each other, Ernest.” 

“Perhaps not.” 

“Well,” said Elise slowly, with strange, 
softened eyes, “if you won’t help me, I will 
help you. I won’t have anybody else help 
my own brother!” 

“I shan’t need any cash for a while, sis.” 

Elise glanced at him without answering. 


50 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

for in her last words she had not been think- 
ing of money ; then she broke forth, Ernest, 
you’re all I’ve got!” 

‘‘Elise,” he said helplessly, ‘‘I’d do what 
you want if I dared, but we’ve both got to 
think of uncle!” 

Elise’s eyes were bent upon him in silence, 
eyes burning bright but tender. The chatter 
and hubbub of the hotel corridor went on 
just beyond the door as always. 

“You think I’m a good-for-nothing beg- 
gar, Elise!” 

“Will you go with me and help me, 
Ernest?” 

“Can’t!” 

“Then I certainly do think you are a good- 
for-nothing beggar!” 

“So says uncle. So says everybody. So 
say I, too!” 

“ Ernest, sit down again, please ! Where are 
you going?” 

“Don’t know. Anywhere, just at present, 
out of this racket. I want some air.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 51 

Ernest strode out along the hall, not noting 
Juliet’s humorous smile as he flung past her 
on the piazza, unseeing. On he went across 
the long clipped lawn, along the park-like 
streets, past the tennis courts, past the golf 
links; on and on into real country, along 
roads hot and dusty, but quiet, quiet; on and 
on. Suddenly he was standing before a little 
flag station at which a casual little train was 
just drawing up. He flung himself aboard. 

It was not the first time Ernest had done 
exactly this thing, only to come back quietly 
in a few hours’ time without any one’s 
knowing. 

To-day he did not know where he was 
going, as the little train creaked and wheezed 
its slow way across the hot July landscape. 
He did not know where he was going until 
the name on a station signboard seemed to 
him suddenly familiar, and peering out, he 
saw, far beyond the vista of a stretching vil- 
lage street, and off there beyond the outlying 
fields, the glimpse of an old white house on a 


52 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

knoll. The train was making its jerky start 
in departure. Ernest sprang off, and once 
more there was a dusty country road beneath 
his feet. But at last before the open gateway 
he stopped short. A large sign, comically 
scrawled, was fastened to a gatepost. Car- 
riages were standing beneath the maples. A 
saddled mare tied to a post was browsing 
just within the gateway. Up there below the 
terrace there had halted, not one auto, but 
half a dozen. There was chatter and move- 
ment and stir beneath the pines through 
which Ernest remembered the wind to have 
gone singing with such sleepy sweetness. 


CHAPTER III 


E RNEST’S white tennis shoes bore him 
in noiseless swiftness along the bricked 
walk beneath the maples. He halted just on 
the outskirts of the little company beneath 
the pines, a slim figure in white tennis 
clothes, at first observed only by an old 
man over there on the piazza. Old Robin 
studied the brown face, which at that mo- 
ment showed many things; for if his uncle 
and Elise thought Ernest a good-for-nothing 
beggar, and he himself thought so, too, it did 
not much matter that afternoon what be- 
came of him, although in the end he supposed 
he would go back again to that everlasting 
hotel! 

A different aspect from that of the former 
afternoon the old Diller place had beneath 
Ernest’s gaze. The wind still sang in the 
pines, but in their amber shade, flecked with 


56 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

idea that afternoon. IVe been doing it five 
days now, and see how many people are 
here! This is the busiest afternoon weVe 
had. — No, Danny, there are n’t any more 
sugar cookies. — Davy, Davy, do hold that 
tray straight! — Won’t you sit down, too, 
Mr.—” 

‘‘My name is Ernest Ray.” 

“I’m Lucy Diller.” 

But now the stout figure in horseman’s 
dress, faultlessly tailored, turned about, ris- 
ing, and disclosed undeniably the red, heavy 
face of Eric Poole. He came toward Lucy, 
purse in hand. 

“Hello, Ray! What you doing here? On 
your way over to Colly’s, too?” 

“I’ve just come,” replied Ernest eva- 
sively. 

“Well, my pretty little girl, how much does 
my grub come to?” 

Flame leaped to Ernest’s cheek bones; but 
Lucy lifted serious eyes. “How much did you 
eat?” she asked. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 57 

^"You expect me to know that, sissy?” 

^‘This is Miss Diller, Poole!” 

“Yes,” explained Lucy, “I let customers 
keep account themselves.” 

“Call that business, do you? Well, I 
should reckon I ate about a dozen of every- 
thing in reach.” 

“That would be about fifty cents, I think.” 

Eric extended a dollar bill, “And the rest 
for the old gentleman in white bibs.” 

“I don’t understand,” puzzled Lucy. 

“A tip.” 

“Oh, we don’t have tips here,” explained 
Lucy with her sweet half-smile. 

“Can’t I even tip you, sissy?” 

“ I ’d like to speak to you a minute, Poole, 
back here by the um. — Now, look here, 
Poole,” Ernest’s fingers were twitching, 
“you’ll pay Miss Diller what you owe her 
without another word and clear out. Do you 
understand ?” 

Poole blinked in pure surprise. “I did n’t 


mean — 


56 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

idea that afternoon. IVe been doing it five 
days now, and see how many people are 
here! This is the busiest afternoon weVe 
had. — No, Danny, there are n’t any more 
sugar cookies. — Davy, Davy, do hold that 
tray straight! — Won’t you sit down, too, 
Mr.—” 

“My name is Ernest Ray.” 

“I’m Lucy Diller.” 

But now the stout figure in horseman’s 
dress, faultlessly tailored, turned about, ris- 
ing, and disclosed undeniably the red, heavy 
face of Eric Poole. He came toward Lucy, 
purse in hand. 

“Hello, Ray! What you doing here? On 
your way over to Colly’s, too?” 

“I’ve just come,” replied Ernest eva- 
sively. 

“Well, my pretty little girl, how much does 
my grub come to?” 

Flame leaped to Ernest’s cheek bones ; but 
Lucy lifted serious eyes. “How much did you 
eat?” she asked. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 57 

‘‘You expect me to know that, sissy?” 

“This is Miss Diller, Poole!” 

“Yes,” explained Lucy, “I let customers 
keep account themselves.” 

“Call that business, do you? Well, I 
should reckon I ate about a dozen of every- 
thing in reach.” 

“That would be about fifty cents, I think.” 

Eric extended a dollar bill, “And the rest 
for the old gentleman in white bibs.” 

“I don’t understand,” puzzled Lucy. 

“A tip.” 

“Oh, we don’t have tips here,” explained 
Lucy with her sweet half-smile. 

“Can’t I even tip you, sissy?” 

“ I ’d like to speak to you a minute, Poole, 
back here by the urn. — Now, look here, 
Poole,” Ernest’s fingers were twitching, 
“you’ll pay Miss Diller what you owe her 
without another word and clear out. Do you 
understand ?” 

Poole blinked in pure surprise. “I did n’t 


mean — 


58 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘ Do you understand ? ” 

Poole walked back and silently extended a 
fifty-cent piece toward the little beadwork 
bag Lucy carried. 

‘‘Good-bye/" said Lucy, holding out her 
hand to shake his in farewell. “ I "m glad you 
liked the doughnuts. I hope you "11 come 
again."" 

“ Don"t you dare to come again ! "" Ernest’s 
clenched teeth ground at Poole’s ear. 

“See here,” said Ernest unsteadily to 
Lucy, “you ought to have some one around — 
to look after you — when things like that - — 
happen!” 

“Why, nothing happened, did it?” Lucy 
looked up at him wonderingly; “and Robin 
is always here, just over there on the porch.” 

Robin had, indeed, while he could not hear 
the words, fully comprehended the incident. 
There were bright spots on his cheek bones as 
well as on Ernest’s, but the trouble with old 
Robin was that he trusted one young man no 
whit more than he did the other! 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 59 

‘‘He just did n’t understand about tips/’ 
Lucy went on comfortably; then her voice 
suddenly shrilled to consternation, “Oh, my 
goodness!” 

Old Davy, bearing a tray holding a pitcher 
of lemonade and tumblers, had suddenly 
collided with old Danny, bearing a tray 
holding a pitcher of buttermilk and tumblers. 
The two old men stood blank amid the 
destruction. 

“Oh,” cried Lucy, “there is more butter- 
milk at the spring-house, but who is to serve 
it — the people are in a hurry — while I run 
into the house and make more lemonade ? ” 

Ernest quickly took the tray from Danny’s 
nerveless hands. Bowing, he said, “Allow 
me to assist you. Miss Diller.” 

Lucy’s shy little smile peeped out, “No- 
body ever called me Miss Diller before,” she 
said; “ I ’m just Lucy.” 

Beyond the gate Eric Poole addressed his 
cantering mare. “Who’d have thought it of 
that kid! Didn’t square his shoulders and 


6o THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


shoot out his eyes at me like that the last 
time I lent him a tenner! Didn’t know he 
had it in him. Juliet must be right about 
him, after all. I never thought there was 
much to him before to-day. Well, I’ll not 
tell on the kid — wonder what ‘Uncle Hugh’ 
would say to it, though! Funny part of it,” 
— and the dull face lighted with humor, — “I 
never meant anything. I got rattled at the 
idea of paying that girl, and I tried to carry 
it off with that bluff, — did n’t mean any- 
thing except that I was fussed, — could n’t 
tell whether she was just a baby or a little 
queen.” 

Up on the porch with old Robin, Jacob 
Simms said, “ Kind of interestin’, ain’t it, our 
little Luce goin’ into business for herself. If 
she keeps on like she ’s begun, I reckon we ’ll 
have to give her the I.F.A. contract this 
year. Reckon she could do it all right. Kind 
of comical to watch her, though, ain’t it?” 

“No comical about it!” snapped Robin. 
“It’s none of my doing, and none of my lik- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 6i 


ing either! Comes of getting old. Don’t get 
old. B-r-r-r!” 

Should n’t mind if I had a girl like that 
to take care of me.” 

‘‘Br-r-r! G-r-r-r! Who’s ever taken care of 
me before! It’s my job to take care of her, 
and it’s a job I’m not thinking of giving up 
either!” 

They had a busy hour of it, Ernest and 
Lucy, but at last the guests, group after 
group, had mounted their vehicles, and 
rolled away down the avenue of maples. 
Ernest was standing by the deserted tables. 

‘‘Stranger round here, ain’t you?” Oily 
Holmes, having scraped his fourth saucer of 
ice cream until it shone, felt himself open to 
conversation. 

Ernest looked about. “Yes, I’m a stran- 
ger.” 

“But you seem to know the Diller folks. 
Friend o’ Lucy’s?” 

“Y-e-yes!” 

“Ever waited table before?” 


62 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


beg pardon? Have I ever — 

‘‘Thought maybe you were one of them 
city fellers that sometimes come up to the 
hotels to wait table summers/’ 

“I never ‘waited table’ before!” 

“ Pretty good at it, then. I ’ve been watch- 
ing you pretty close.” Then Oily brought 
out the invitation that was the result of that 
hour of observation, “If you’re a stranger 
here, I got a horse and a buckboard down 
yonder at the gate. Perhaps you’d like to 
jump in ? I could show you a bit of the coun- 
try and bring you back in an hour. You 
stoppin’ somewhere round here, I suppose.” 
“Stopping? Why, I really don’t know.” 
“Jump in?” Oily repeated his invitation. 
Involuntarily Ernest glanced from his 
white costume, dusty though it was, to the 
burly form in drab shirt and blue overalls 
and broad hat. He remembered that the 
Colly place must be somewhere in the neigh- 
borhood. He knew the Colly s only by 
name, but Eric Poole was staying with them. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 63 

‘‘Fm afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” he 
replied. ‘‘I’m afraid I can’t go this after- 
noon.” 

Oily Holmes coolly repeated Ernest’s gaze 
from one costume to the other; then looked 
him straight in the eye, “I guess I made a 
mistake after all that watchin’. Folks down 
here likes to make a stranger welcome, but 
not if the stranger don’t wish. I reckon Jake 
and I’ll be gettin’ along home.” 

A little later Ernest and the old twins and 
Lucy had had their supper beneath the 
pines, a meal made from the supply the after- 
noon company had not exhausted. Robin 
over on the piazza had received his tray from 
Ernest’s hand with a gruff word of recogni- 
tion and welcome. Then Ernest had helped 
Lucy to feed the chickens and to put away 
the milk in the cool brown jars within the 
dusty spring-house. Afterward the two had 
gone back again to the clump of pines. Lucy 
was sitting in her little-girl swing, and Ernest 
had flung himself down, his back to a pine 


64 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

trunk. Before them stretched the lawn now 
growing up in aftermath, and beyond the 
fence and the road lay other meadows, and 
beyond these the village and blue hills 
against a golden sunset. 

“I say, this place is great!’’ Ernest burst 
out after a few moments of silence. 

‘‘Yes,” said Lucy. 

“We were country youngsters, my sister 
and I, so long ago that I ’ve almost forgotten. 
It all comes back to-night. I think I must 
have helped somebody feed the chickens and 
put the milk away, long ago when I was very 
small. I can just barely remember it, to- 
night.” 

“Yes,” mused Lucy, “it would come back 
to you here.” 

“Miss Diller, you can’t know how lucky 
you are to belong to an old place like this. 
It’s such luck to be able to stay put. If 
you’d gone about the way I have, you’d 
know.” 

“Oh, I do know! I do know! That’s why 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 65 

Vm doing it, because I want to stay here 
with Robin, always.” 

‘‘That’s why you’re doing this?” Ernest 
indicated the tables behind them. 

“Yes, the ‘afternoon refreshment for all,’ ” 
answered Lucy with a motion of her grave 
little head toward the sign down there by the 
gate. 

“It was a fine idea. I hope it will be suc- 
cessful!” 

“It is being successful; don’t you think 
so? You’re quite sure you counted right? 
It always comes out different every time 
I count. I’m so much obliged to you for 
straightening out the cigar boxes. If I keep 
dollar bills in one, and fifty-cent pieces in 
another, and the small change in another, I 
don’t think I’ll get mixed up again. And 
anyway, I’ve made enough already to pay 
one of them myself. I thought I saw a 
strange buggy coming this morning, and I 
was afraid it was one of them, and sure 
enough it was, but I ran down through the 


66 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


orchard and paid him and made him turn 
around before Robin knew.” 

“Fm afraid I don’t quite understand. 
‘One of them’?” 

“Agents. You know they come here and 
make Robin buy all sorts of things, and then 
they make him pay for them, and that’s 
been the trouble. That’s why I’m trying 
to make some money. Perhaps we shan’t 
have to lose the lower pasture after all. I 
got hold of Jacob Simms and asked him 
to just wait a little, without telling Robin. 
For I’m making money, — isn’t it splen- 
did! You’re quite sure there’s thirteen 
dollars and eighty-five cents in the cigar 
boxes.” 

“Quite sure.” 

“Then, with the twelve dollars I paid that 
agent that would be” — Lucy paused to 
reckon — “twenty-five dollars and eighty- 
five cents that I’ve made in five days! Most 
of it I made to-day, and I could n’t have 
done it if you hadn’t come to help me just at 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 67 

the right minute. Have I really made all 
that money already 

‘‘Why, I don’t suppose you’ve made that 
clear, Miss Diller. You’d have to subtract 
the cost of the food. About how much do 
you think that came to?” 

“Why, I have n’t any idea. Ought I to 
keep an account of that, too?” 

“Well, I fancy so, if you’re going into the 
business seriously.” He smiled faintly to 
think of a very different young lady with 
whom he had had a very different conversa- 
tion earlier in the day. Elise would have 
known the cost of things, down to the tenth 
of a cent. That was how she had been able 
to save money, out of nothing at all. By the 
way, what in the world was it she intended to 
do with those savings ? Nothing, he hoped, 
that would offend his uncle or make people 
look down on Elise herself. Ernest’s brows 
knotted sharply as the recollection of the 
earlier part of the day suddenly poured in 
upon him. How strangely all that had 


68 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

slipped away from him during the last two 
hours ! Here he was chatting away with the 
little calico rustic, and he had been doing his 
best to be “friendly’’ with the three old 
brothers, “people beneath him.” 

Across the evening stillness came a tap- 
tap-tapping, low but insistent, and a low 
growling sound. 

“Perhaps Mr. Diller wants you,” sug- 
gested Ernest. 

Lucy listened intently a moment. “No, I 
don’t think so, he’s stopped knocking now. 
He’s whistling.” 

The sound, considered in connection with 
darkling glances Ernest had lately noted, 
somehow rasped his ear. “ Perhaps he thinks 
I’m keeping you here too long?” he sug- 
gested again. 

“You’re not keeping me,” said Lucy, pre- 
occupied. “You said if I was going into 
business seriously. But I am! It’s very 
serious, for don’t you see it’s home and 
Robin!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 69 

'"I see/’ answered Ernest with instant 
sympathy. 

‘‘And it’s pretty serious, anyway, going to 
work, to make money, don’t you think so?” 

“It seems to be!” said Ernest, reverting to 
his thoughts of himself. 

Lucy’s smile came shining. “But it’s the 
happiest thing in the world to be making 
money for some one you love, don’t you 
think so?” 

“I’ve never tried it!” 

“Oh,” said Lucy in a change of tone that 
put Ernest suddenly miles away; “I forgot 
that you are rich and don’t have to think 
about making money.” 

“ I ’m not rich and I do have to think about 
making money ! Rather ! ” 

“Do you?” cried Lucy eagerly; “oh, then 
you do understand how I feel, how happy I 
am to be doing something. I never did any- 
thing before, you know. I never even thought 
about it, I ’m afraid, until — until I realized 
about Robin.” 


70 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘Until you realized — 

“How much it all means to us! I must 
keep the old place!’’ 

“I see,” said Ernest quietly. 

“And you do think it’s going to succeed, 
don’t you?” 

“It must!” 

“This afternoon for the first time I was 
frightened when people came so fast, and I 
could n’t make change quickly, and for a 
little while it did n’t seem as if I could see to 
ever5rthing at once. That’s the hard part. 
The cooking and baking I just love! Then 
when the boys broke the glasses! And just 
then you came!” 

“I’m glad I did!” 

They were silent for some moments. Lucy 
was looking at him long and hard, while her 
eyes grew bigger and bigger with a dawning 
idea. 

“I thought I could manage all by myself,” 
she said at last, “but I don’t know what I 
would have done without you this afternoon.” 



WON^T YOU STAY HERE AND BE MY HIRED MAN ? 



THE OLD DILLER PLACE 71 

glad I happened along/’ 

‘‘If the boys get frightened that way, and 
more and more people come,” Lucy went on 
breathlessly, “it — it looks as if I needed 
some one to help me, does n’t it?” 

“Yes, I think you ought to look for some 
one to help you. Miss Diller.” 

“Mr. Ray, did you really mean it, — that 
you’re not rich, and that you do have to 
think about making money?” 

“I meant it! Rather!” 

“ Even — even — not very much money ? ” 

“ I ’d be glad to-day of ten cents I could call 
my own.” 

“Truly? Truly? And you like it here, 
don’t you?” Lucy’s next words were really 
to herself to stiffen her courage, — “And I 
need some one if I ’m to succeed ! And I must 
succeed — for Robin!” Then out it came, 
“Mr. Ray, would you be willing to stay here 
and be my hired man?” 


CHAPTER IV 


I N the spicy kitchen, dark-raftered, dark- 
wainscoted, whose front windows gave 
on the lawn, the meadows, and the blue hills 
beyond the village, and whose back windows 
were shielded from the morning sun by a 
porch twined with flaunting morning-glories, 
Lucy was making cake. She was blue-pina- 
fored from neck to ankle and her sleeves were 
rolled to the shoulder. Ernest, swinging his 
long legs from one end of the kitchen table, 
was cracking nuts. Seated in the old cush- 
ioned rocker, Danny was stoning raisins, and 
Davy was standing at Lucy’s elbow, which 
was crooked about her yellow cake bowl, 
while he whipped the whites of the eggs. 
From the back yard the little chicks peeped 
cheerily, and a fresh current blew pleasantly 
between the two doors, open, front and back. 
/‘Oh, is n’t it fun?” exclaimed Lucy. “All 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 73 

morning we’re all just as busy as we can be 
and then all afternoon we’re just as busy as 
we can be, and in the evening there’s the 
money to count. I never knew it was such 
fun to work and make money! You like it, 
too, don’t you, Ernest?” 

‘‘Best fun I ever had, these two weeks!” 

“It’s succeeding, is n’t it? I feel so much 
surer since you got me the account book.” 

“We’ve got to make the thing go!” cried 
Ernest. “It’s going all right, too!” 

“I wish your aunt could see it now; don’t 
you believe she’d think it as good as an inn 
now? Every afternoon I watch the gate to 
see your red auto come, and I ’m sorry when 
it never comes.” 

Ernest, too, watched the gate for the same 
reason, but he was not sorry when the red 
auto did not come, nor yet any other autos of 
his acquaintance! Raywood seemed fortu- 
nately a little too distant, although the 
nearer summer resorts supplied numerous 
patrons. 


74 the old DILLER PLACE 

love to see your sister again/’ mused 

Lucy. 

‘‘You liked my sister pretty well, did n’t 
you?” 

“I think she’s lovely. She’s different from 
people I’ve known. She has such pretty 
clothes. Then she’s so — so — mean she 
looks as if she’d know how to do anything.” 

“Don’t believe she knows how to make 
cake,” smiled Ernest; “I’m sure I don’t 
know when she’d have learned.” 

“One has to stay at home to learn how to 
do home things,” said Lucy sagely. 

“We have n’t any home. Aunt Laura 
thinks it’s too much trouble. Elise and I 
used to talk about having a home of our own 
some day.” 

“When you’re grown up?” 

“What!” cried Ernest, startled and 
amused; “I’m grown up now. I’m twenty- 
one. Finished college last month.” 

Lucy regarded him with puzzled scrutiny. 
“ But your sister is older than you, is n’t she ? ” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 75 

^‘No, two years younger/’ 

‘‘She’ll like it, won’t she?” 

“Like what?” 

“Why, the home! The home you spoke of 
just now, that you’re going to make for her.” 

“Oh!” Ernest fell to whistling softly. 

“Do I really know more about cooking 
than your sister does?” 

“Yes.” 

“ I ’ve done all the cooking and baking here 
since I was twelve. Martha Beardsley taught 
me. Do you really think my things taste 
pretty good ? People in the afternoons seem 
to like them, don’t they? I love to cook 
things, but I never thought of making money 
out of it before.” 

“You make mighty good things to eat!” 
said Ernest heartily, reflecting that this 
seemed to be the opinion of Lucy’s customers 
despite the humorous crudities of Lucy’s re- 
freshment room beneath the pines. He him- 
self, in his interest in it, had often wished for 
Elise and a half-hour of her suggestions. And, 


76 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

oh, dear, what had become of Elise in the two 
weeks ? Ernest knew that he could n’t much 
longer postpone finding out the answer to 
that question. The happy morning sunshine 
of the old farm kitchen seemed to darken 
with his thoughts. 

Lucy’s face was still all aglow. “I’m 
afraid I’m awfully proud and happy about 
all I ’m doing this summer,” she ad- 
mitted. 

“You’ve certainly given me two good 
weeks,” answered Ernest; “I’ll never forget 
my two weeks here.” 

Lucy’s face dimmed to a blank consterna- 
tion. “Two weeks! Why, you are n’t going 
away, are you? You know I couldn’t get 
along without you now! Why, there are 
more people every day, and more things to 
think about, and more money to count. You 
wouldn’t go away now! You’ll stay and 
help me, Ernest?” 

“You’d help another girl; you won’t help 
your own sister!” Sharply Elise’s words 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 77 

rang through Ernest’s memory, as they had 
been ringing for two weeks. 

‘‘I thought you liked it here. I thought 
you’d stay all summer. And you know how I 
am hoping and hoping that they will give me 
the contract for the LF.A. supper next month. 
That will mean hundreds of people, — all the 
farmers who come from all around, and all the 
summer people who come to look on. That 
would mean a hundred dollars, perhaps ! The 
old place would be safe, then! But what should 
I do with hundreds of people, all alone?” 

In his heart of hearts Ernest had thought 
it might be just as well if Lucy did not get 
that coveted LF.A. contract! Especially if 
she were all alone ! 

‘‘You’ll stay here and help me, Ernest?” 

In Ernest’s head still the words, “Your 
own sister! Your own sister!” 

It was such a sweet child-face that 
pleaded, looking up at him over the great 
cake bowl. 

“I’ll stay — a little while yet, anyway. 


78 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

When we get the LF.A. contract, that will be 
the time to decide about the rest of the sum- 
mer. You won’t worry, will you, Lucy? No- 
body could stand having you worry! Bother 
the future ; I ’m here to help you to-day, any- 
way.” 

“You’re here for this week, at least, 
aren’t you?” Lucy was beginning to 
brighten, for people usually gave in to her 
sooner or later. “No, I won’t worry; I ’ll just 
hope you’ll stay.” 

Presently she was pouring the batter into 
the tins. “ Shall I make you a little cake for a 
taster? You and the boys?” 

“Yes, do!” 

It came out of the oven by and by, the 
taster, and, crisp and toothsome, was care- 
fully divided into three pieces by Lucy, and 
distributed. Then she brought another cake 
from the pantry and set to icing it with 
mathematical precision, pursing her lips 
earnestly. She had meanwhile handed Ernest 
the icing-bowl to scrape. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 79 

^‘Clearly you don’t think me grown up, 
Lucy.” His eyes twinkled. 

Lucy glanced up. “Oh, you mean the 
little cake and the icing-bowl? That’s the 
kind of thing I always do for the boys, and 
when you’re around with them this way, 
why, you just seem to me like another boy.” 

Ernest glanced at old Davy and Danny 
munching their cake. The twinkle bright- 
ened in his eyes, but he kept his lips as grave 
as Lucy’s. 

“Lucy, I must say you’re very different 
from any young lady I have ever known!” 

“Why, I’m not a young lady at all. Now, 
your sister is what I call a young lady.” 

“You and Elise are certainly very differ- 
ent,” he answered, and his eyes grew as 
serious as his lips. 

Out on the shady front porch a little group 
was seated. They were all gray-headed, but 
to themselves, Jacob and Martha and Myra 
were still the little band that long ago had 
come pattering up the bricked walk to play 


8o THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


with the little rollicking lame boy who knew 
such wonderful games to hold them there 
with him on his porch. 

Myra, the village dressmaker, quick-eyed 
and sharp and spinster, was making Lucy a 
new white dress. Jacob Simms had brought 
Martha Beardsley over on the milk wagon in 
order that she might help for a few hours in 
running the lace. A billow of mull lay across 
her ample lap. Of course, Jacob had to stop 
and wait for Martha when he returned from 
the milk station. Jacob had to stop at the 
old Diller place a great deal in those days. He 
sat hunched on the step as usual. 

‘‘Luce don’t suspect nothing, does she, 
’bout that there contract?” He nodded with 
the air of a conspirator from the white dress 
toward Lucy in the kitchen. 

But Myra and Robin controlled a smile at 
Jake’s innocence, for they humored each 
other, those four, except when Myra and 
Martha became a bit at odds, each tacitly 
assuming she had a special right to mother 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 8i 


Lucy, Myra because she had not chick nor 
child, and Martha because she had success- 
fully raised seven. 

‘‘Lucy’s too busy with all she’s got on 
hand each day to be suspecting anything,” 
said Myra. 

“She’ll look some growed up in that there 
dress,” went on Jake* 

“You needn’t take too much trouble to 
grow her up in any dress, Myra!” said 
Robin. 

“There’s been five hotels after me already 
for that contract, but I ’m going to give it to 
our Luce,” continued Jacob, proud president 
of the Independent Farmers’ Association; 
“but I ain’t goin’ to tell her till the last 
minute, to see how she’ll take it, and how 
she’ll put it through.” 

“Pretty big contract for a little girl,” 
murmured Robin, uneasy in spite of his 
pride. 

“We’ll stand by her, Martha and me,” 
Myra reassured him. 


82 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


‘‘ Don’t we always ? ” said Martha, placidly 
rocking; ‘‘bless her!” 

“ She seems to have pretty good help now,” 
hazarded Jake, desirous of gossip. 

“Yes,” said the two women, but their tone 
was enigmatic. 

“B-r-r-r! G-r-r-r!” 

“Well?” Myra’s tone suggested that 
Robin become articulate. 

“Would you expect me to like it, Myra?” 

“To like what?” 

“Like sitting still, at this late day!” 

To some it might have seemed that Robin 
had been sitting still all his life, but the three 
understood him. 

“Old ! Me ! ” he growled ; “ it has n’t struck 
the rest of you yet, but wait till you try it!” 

“It’s all right, Robin,” soothed Martha; 
“it’s all right Lucy should do something for 
you now. You took her in. It was bread cast 
on the waters.” 

“ Br-r-r-r ! G-r-r-r ! ” Rat-tat-tat-tat ! Robin 
was quite purple ; then a flash of utter silence. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 83 

and out beamed Robin’s smile upon whim- 
sical lips, reckon it’s easier forme to cast 
bread upon the waters than it is to eat it 
when it comes back! I didn’t want Lucy 
should ever do anything.” 

^‘Hush!” warned Martha, for there was 
the quick patter of light steps, followed by 
heavier ones, which latter halted just within 
the door while Ernest looked forth upon the 
company. 

A little figure in straight-falling blue was 
holding white arms high aloft, like a caryatid. 
Bent-back palms above Lucy’s gold-flecked 
hair supported a great white cake. 

^‘It’s the biggest one I ever made,” said 
Lucy, turning all around for them to see, 
before she sank abruptly on one knee, sup- 
porting the cake on the other. “Now see the 
top. Look!” 

They looked. “You’d recognize it, would 
n’t you?” Lucy’s lips besought them as she 
gazed around on their faces. 

“It’s the house!” 


84 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

^‘Yes, and the spring-house and the steps 
on the terrace. You see, it’s a sort of flat 
picture done in icing. I ’m going to put it on 
the middle of the table to-day and take 
orders for more.” 

“Did you do all that, this morning!” 

“Yes, and loads of other things 1 Come and 
see, Martha.” 

“All by yourself, too, dearie!” 

“Yes; nobody helped but the boys.” 

“One of those boys is pretty good help,” 
suggested Martha cordially, speaking to the 
pair of boyish eyes, which, just within the 
doorway, brooded upon Lucy. 

“Oh, yes, Ernest!” agreed Lucy, to whom 
her cake was much more absorbing. 

“You’re pretty good help, Ernest,” re- 
peated Martha, meaning hospitable appre- 
ciation of the stranger; but at those words 
Myra spied a sudden shadow on the young 
man’s face. 

“But perhaps you’d rather we did n’t call 
you Ernest,” she suggested with directness. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 85 

‘‘Why, we always call people by their first 
names when they stay here!’’ said Lucy. 

“Do we, Mr. Ray?” Four keen pairs of 
old eyes were upon him. 

“Why — why — ” he stammered, “it’s all 
right for Lucy to call me Ernest, of course.” 

“Excuse me,” murmured gentle Martha, 
flushing. 

“Excuse us all,” said Myra, but she did 
not say for what they were to be excused. 

There was a brief but awkward pause. 

“Have I the orders for all the things you 
want me to get in the village, Lucy?” asked 
Ernest, anxious to withdraw. 

“I ’ll come into the kitchen and look at the 
list again,” Lucy responded. 

As the youngsters withdrew, Myra bit her 
thread grimly. “Pretty stiff in the collar 
still, that young man.” 

“He’ll get used to us some day,” — 
Martha excused him; “and he’s done a lot 
for Lucy. I don’t know what she’d do with- 
out him.” 


86 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


‘‘Well, I know I could do without him!’’ 
snapped Robin. 

Ernest, returning through the rear door of 
the hall to get his cap, heard the words. 
Their sharpness kept recurring to his ear 
through all his thoughts as he jogged toward 
the village for supplies. Many a time through 
the dreamy unreality of the past two weeks, 
old Robin’s sharpness had crashed thus, re- 
minding Ernest of his uncle’s speeches to him. 
Old Robin’s remarks to Ernest, never made 
in Lucy’s presence, were on the whole more 
caustic than Mr. Cope’s, but they had a curi- 
ously different effect. After a talk with his 
uncle, Ernest usually felt as if he had lost an 
inch from his height and added an inch of 
stoop to his back, whereas when one of 
Robin’s thrusts had driven the blood to his 
cheek, Ernest felt like squaring his shoulders 
to show every one in that countryside that he 
was as much of a man as any one in it. 
Ernest always knew when the old man’s 
darting eyes were upon him. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 87 

Once Robin demanded, ‘‘Young man, does 
your uncle know where you are?” 

“I don’t think so, Mr. Diller.” 

“Not told him? Why does n’t he look you 
up, then? Not worth it, eh?” 

The strangest part of all was that Robin 
did not make Ernest angry, and this was not 
because Robin was an old man and a cripple, 
for he made you forget that in a twinkling! 
However grotesquely ferocious old Robin 
might be, it was in fact very hard for Ernest 
not to like him. 

For two weeks Ernest had sent no word to 
his uncle or to Elise. His instinctive secrecy 
was a little that of the small boy who runs 
away after a whipping in order to give his 
cruel parents a fine fright; still more was it 
due to the strange feeling of unreality the 
unexpectedness of his present position had 
given him ; but most of all it was due to Lucy. 
Could he tell his uncle he was serving as hired 
man at a wage of board and five dollars a week 
to the little girl in blue calico? Could he tell 


88 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


Elise that he was helping another girl in labor 
most menial when he had refused to help his 
own sister? Could he, in fact, tell any one 
who belonged to his old life about Lucy? 

Yet poor old Elise, of course, — he must go 
back to her pretty soon, but not quite yet. 
All other things apart, it was really fun to try 
to carry through a scheme like Lucy’s. The 
thing must succeed, must be made to pay. 
Whatever happened, Lucy’s business must be 
a success. A set look, wholly new to them, 
came to Ernest’s lips at that determination. 

Meanwhile, a little longer, — the drifting. 
It had never been very hard for Ernest to 
drift. Into what a strange dream of peace 
and pleasantness he had walked, half mad 
with worry, that July afternoon — his days 
now, from morning to night, so gayly busy, 
and the twilights on the edge of the pine 
grove, or on the piazza beneath the honey- 
suckle, and the drowsiness that came so soon ! 
At that early bedtime Lucy would light his 
candle for him from the half-moon mahog- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 89 

any table in the hall and he would go trudg- 
ing upstairs to turn at the landing to say 
good-night; Lucy would be looking up at 
him, her two hands folded on the black knob 
of the newel post, intent to see that he 
dripped no candle grease, as she had cau- 
tioned him, so that the last he saw of her 
would always be that little face upturned, 
shown in the light of his candle against the 
darkness of the hall. Then Lucy would go 
out to perch on Robin’s chair-arm, and their 
two voices, chatting away, would sound for 
all the world like the twitter of the birds 
down in the orchard. 

For Ernest his room had a spell, a great 
old wainscotted room with a pale faded 
paper. There was a faded gilt mirror and a 
high chest of drawers with glass knobs. 
There was a small fireplace, and on the ledge 
of the mantel above it conch shells and luster 
vases. The fleckless curtains at the many- 
paned windows were frail with much wash- 
ing. The bed brought Ernest back to forgot- 


90 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

ten days when he had had a dear country 
girl of a mother to tuck him in at night. It 
was a four-poster spread with a feather mat- 
tress, homespun blankets, and linen sheets 
spiced with lavender. 

Ernest would fall asleep to the creak-creak 
of a katydid beyond his window, to the rustle 
of turkeys roosting in the pear tree, and the 
light tapping of the old lilac bush against 
the house. He would wake to the flooding 
eastern dawn. Downstairs there would be 
the sound of a broom, and a fresh young 
voice would be singing, and out on the porch 
in the early summer morning old Robin would 
be whistling cheerily. 

And all this after hotels and hotels and 
hotels! 

Thus the thoughts drifted through Ern- 
est’s mind as he jogged on in the creeping 
old buggy and turned into the dusty vil- 
lage street. He made his purchases, and was 
then about to drive on to the other end of the 
street to deliver a message from Lucy. His 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 91 

manner in buying was polite, but so expedi- 
tious that the village shopkeepers considered 
him offish and taciturn, and would not have 
dreamed of entering into the usual gossip. 
Otherwise Ernest might not have been so 
startled that morning. 

He knew every house front and shop front 
familiarly now. Suddenly he flung back the 
buggy top and stared out with eyes aghast. 
Yes, that was the very house, diagonally 
across from the town hall, which he remem- 
bered to have seen closely shuttered the last 
time he had driven by. He remembered that 
some one had said the ground floor had been 
mysteriously rented, to be opened up no one 
knew for what purpose. The purpose was 
plainly manifest now! Plain not only in the 
artistic sign that hung forth from the door, 
and in the board between the windows of in- 
conspicuous dark wood, on which dull old 
English lettering declared invitation and 
advertisement, but plain also to Ernest’s 
accustomed gaze in the flirt of dainty cur- 


9-2 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

tains at the window, of flowering geraniums 
upon the sill, and the glimpse within of cool- 
tinted walls and dainty little tables. 

“Just opened yesterday afternoon, and 
there was six autos stopped therej not going 
on to Lucy’s.” 

It was Oily Holmes speaking from the side- 
walk. Ernest flashed him a look of sympathy 
with the growling tone, and then jerked 
about and went whipping home through the 
dust. He passed Jacob Simms and Martha 
Beardsley lumbering toward the village in 
the milk wagon, and gave them a nod, unsee- 
ing. He went speeding up the drive, and 
jumped out at the terrace to run bounding up 
the steps to Robin on the porch. Myra was 
busy within at the sewing-machine. Robin 
was all alone. 

“Mr. Diller, what can we do? What can 
we do?” 

“Do about what, man?” 

“"The afternoon refreshment for all’!” 

The words on the sign he had just passed at 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 93 

the gate were the first to come to Ernest’s 
lips. 

‘‘Do about that!” Robin’s stick was 
brandished toward the tables beneath the 
pines. “I know what I’d like to do about 
that 1 I ’d like to lock that gate down there, 
and take this stick and break every one of 
those tables and burn ’em for firewood. Do 
you think, young man, I’ve any liking for 
that business yonder? Do you think I 
would n’t be glad of anything that would put 
a stop to it!” 

“But Lucy—” 

“You’re right, young man. ‘But Lucy!’ 
Lucy’s the reason those tables are here, and 
the reason you’re here, and the reason the 
old place is going to be here, and us on it! 
‘But Lucy.’ Yes, you and I understand each 
other there, young man!” 

“Mr. Diller, somebody has opened a re- 
freshment room in the village, just on the 
main street where all the autos pass. A lot of 
them stopped there yesterday!” 


94 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘What, Ernest? What? What?’’ Robin 
had not called him Ernest before. 

“Yes, Mr. Diller, I saw it.” 

“Where? Who? Does anybody think I’ll 
stand it ? When I open up a business here at 
my own door, am I going to sit still and let 
somebody steal it away from me? B-r-r-r-r! 
When I put all my mind into a scheme like 
that yonder, does any one think they’re 
going to pick it out of my hand. This re- 
freshment business is my business. I’ll have 
this village know ! Anybody think they can 
get it away from me! Let ’em try, let ’em 
try, let ’em try!” 

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat- tat ! Old Davy, at 
the supposed summons, came to show a 
frightened face at the door. Robin clenched 
his teeth to force himself to say, “No, no, 
Davy, never you mind about this. Go back 
out there with Lucy.” Then, turning again 
to Ernest, “Who’s the person?” 

“A stranger; but from the look of things 
some one that knows how.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 95 

^‘And what did you do about it?’’ 

‘‘What could I do? I came right back.” 

“You — did n’t — do — a — thing?” 

“How in the world could I?” 

“How — in — the — world — could — 
you!” 

“There was nothing — ” 

“Young man!” 

“Yes, Mr. Diller!” 

Old Robin’s stick was pointed at Ernest’s 
chest. His eyes were a galvanic battery. 

“Understand one thing, Mr. Ray.” 

“Yes, Mr. Diller.” 

“That when there’s anything I can’t at- 
tend to on this place, you’ve got to! Now! 
You take that horse and buggy and you go 
back to the village, and don’t show your face 
at that gate again until you’ve put a stop to 
that stranger!” 

“But—” 

“Go!” 

Ernest went. He got to the village so soon 
that he had to spend a great deal of time 


96 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

at the hitching-post before he could decide 
what to say when he entered the new tea- 
room, and when he did enter he still did n’t 
know what he was going to say. The pro- 
prietor alone was visible. She turned about 
from hanging a picture. She wore a white 
linen dress and a tiny ruffled apron. She 
stood perfectly still; then her brown face 
crimsoned with joy and she held out both 
her hands. It was Elise! 


CHAPTER V 


E rnest, where did you get those 
clothes?’’ Elise’s hands were resting 
lightly on Ernest’s shoulders as she spoke. 

‘"Here in the village. What, won’t they 
do? Can’t I wear them?” 

“Yes,” smiled Elise; “but nobody but you 
could ! I have all your things here with me in 
your trunk, if you want them.” 

“You bet I do! I’ll take the trunk home 
with me in the buggy.” 

“Take it where, Ernest?” 

“Oh, out where I’m putting up.” 

“I have a little bedroom here, Ernest, all 
ready for you, and there’s a room back of 
these where we can have our meals. It is n’t 
quite like a house of our own, but it will be 
homey. I wanted to have everything ready 
for you when you came back to me. You 
never let me know where you were, Ernest.” 


98 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘Did you worry, sis?’’ 

“Not so much as I should have if I had n’t 
thought uncle knew. Things were too awk- 
ward for me to ask too many questions, but I 
thought he knew.” 

“He did n’t know. What made you think 
so?” 

“He said, ‘Ernest is all right. He’ll come 
back to us when he’s ready, and we’re 
ready.’” 

“I wonder if he’s ready now,” mused 
Ernest ; “ I keep thinking about him.” 

“I don’t know whether he’s ready or not,” 
said Elise sharply; then with a quick change, 
“but I’m ready to have you back, Ernest!” 

“ I say, Elise, how have they taken it, un- 
cle and auntie, our going off like this ? ” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You take it pretty coolly.” 

“Well, and if I do? I did so want to be 
free and independent. Auntie has Celeste 
back, and uncle — uncle has been so cross to 
you lately! I can’t forgive people who are 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 99 

cross to you, Ernest, even if — even if Fm a 
little bit cross to you myself sometimes.” 

“Oh, Fm not much good. But it seems 
pretty shabby of us both to run off like this. 
Seems as if I ought to go and make a clean 
breast of everything to uncle.” 

“But there is n’t anything to make a clean 
breast of, is there, Ernest?” 

“Nothing wrong, if that’s what you mean, 
has happened in these three weeks, Elise.” 

“I knew that as soon as I saw your face. 
You’re looking wonderfully well, Ernest.” 

“You’re looking pretty well yourself, sis; 
— more color.” 

“Oh, business agrees with me! I always 
knew it would. Ernest, now that your eyes 
are not quite so big with surprise, just look 
around and see all that I ’ve done in the week 
I ’ve been shut up here alone with my secret. 
Before that I was a week in New York buy- 
ing things and getting all the points I could 
on tea-rooms. I could get things done in a 
hurry there because it’s summer. I could get 


loo THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


things done in New York, but, oh, dear, I 
have n’t been able to get anybody to help me 
here. Nobody seems willing to do a thing 
for me. I heard that a Mrs. Beardsley makes 
beautiful cake, and just a few moments ago I 
called there, but she absolutely refused to 
do any baking. This morning I asked the 
truckman — Holmes is his name — if he 
could n’t stop long enough to open that 
crate in the hall — it’s all wired — but he 
would n’t. I bought some tweezers and tried 
to unwire it myself, but I could n’t.” 

‘‘Let’s have a look at it! Where are the 
tweezers?” 

“Here, Ernest, you’re a godsend. How I 
have needed a man!” 

“Any other jobs?” Jobs at that moment 
were more of a godsend to Ernest than to 
Elise, for never in his life had his thoughts 
been in such a turmoil. 

“I even had to hang my signs myself,” 
Elise continued. “I engaged a man to do it, 
but as soon as he saw what they were, he 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE loi 

would n’t. I can’t imagine what ails the 
people. Fortunately I don’t depend on the 
village for patronage. The signs haven’t 
been up more than an hour or two, for I 
wanted to keep everything a secret until I 
could suddenly surprise all the autos and 
carriages that go through in the afternoons. 
All the summer resorts around here go driv- 
ing along this main street in the afternoon, 
and you know how hard up we were for a 
cup of tea that time in June. That’s when I 
had the idea of a tea-room. So you see I 
know there’s a demand, and I know there’s 
no competition, and I know I’ve got a fine 
situation, right on the main street, even if 
it is a little hot, perhaps. Oh, it’s going to 
be a great success — don’t you believe it 
is?” 

‘"Elise, I never saw you so happy in my 
life!” 

‘‘I’m doing something at last, and besides 
I have you back, Ernest.” 

Ernest’s temples were growing sharply 


102 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


pinched with strain. ‘T say, what’s that in 
the corner there, Elise?” 

‘‘A real Russian samovar. I just hap- 
pened on it. And is n’t my china pretty and 
my doilies? It really does look inviting, 
does n’t it?” 

‘‘Yes; you always did know how to run 
things.” 

“ But it would be more to the purpose if I 
knew how to cook! That’s the only trouble, 
— that and having no one to help me. I ’ve 
all the ready-made eatables and drinkables I 
could find, but I ought to have home-made 
things, too, and then some one to help, espe- 
cially in the case of a crowd.” 

“Yes,” agreed Ernest shortly. 

“That, you know, Ernest,” Elise hesi- 
tated, giving him a long look, “was what I’d 
planned for you.” 

“What?” 

“Not waiting on people, of course! But 
lots of other things, like taking the money 
and keeping accounts.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 103 

‘‘You’re good enough at that yourself, 
Elise.” 

“You’re good at it, too; good enough”; 
here an old resentment flashed out, — “good 
enough to be in uncle’s bank!” 

“He does n’t think so!” 

“He shall think so! We’ll show him! 
Uncle’s just the kind of a man to help people 
after they’ve shown they can help them- 
selves!” 

“I think you’re entirely mistaken there, 
Elise,” said Ernest slowly, turning a little 
pale as he nerved himself to the situation. 
“My whole view is that this whole thing is 
going to make him thundering mad, and 
we’ve no right to do that. What did he 
think of your scheme, Elise?” 

Elise hesitated. “At first he did n’t say 
what he thought, and I did n’t stay long 
enough afterwards to find out.” 

“You just went ahead, not knowing what 
he thought ? I can guess well enough what 
he’s thinking!” 


104 the old DILLER PLACE 

“Ernest, I wanted to have a place ready 
for you when you came back!’" 

“But, sis,” — if the hard words must 
come, Ernest strove to speak them gently, 
— “suppose IVe found a place for my- 
self?” 

“Ernest, did n’t you come this morning to 
tell me that you would help me as I begged 
you to three weeks ago? I thought that was 
why you came. I thought it meant you were 
going to be a man!” 

“ I hope I am going to be a man ! ” 

“Ernest, aren’t you going to stay and 
help me now?” 

“O Elise!” he cried out, “I wish to good- 
ness you’d never started this business!” 

“You wish I’d never started!” repeated 
Elise dreamily. “Do you mean you’d like 
me to give it up now before I’ve begun?” 

“I wish to goodness you’d give it up this 
minute!” 

“Why? For whom?” 

“For uncle!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 105 

“I thought so!’’ Then Elise spoke slowly, 
‘‘I will not give it up for uncle!” 

“Give it up for me, then, sis!” 

Quietly, while her great dark eyes looked 
at him as if across a gulf, Elise answered, “ It 
is for you I will keep on! Your little room is 
waiting for you, Ernest.” 

The boy did not answer; he went and 
stood at the window looking out. 

“Ernest?” 

“Yes?” He did not turn. 

“Ernest, where have you been since you 
left me ?” Elise’s voice was low and hesitant. 
She had no wish he should fling off from her 
as he had done in June. 

He faced her abruptly. It was on his 
tongue to burst through the strange silence 
with which his lips seemed sealed against tell- 
ing one word of those three weeks. “I believe 
I ’ve been in a dream for three weeks,” he said. 

But suddenly Elise’s yearning eyes changed 
to flame as they sought to probe his. “Er- 
nest, I believe it is just some silly girl again! 


io6 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


You have been playing with some silly girl 
and leaving me all alone ! I thought when I 
saw you that something had happened in 
these three w^eeks that was beginning to 
make a man of you, and instead it is just 
some girl again! Ernest, is that the truth?’’ 
The boy to whom she was speaking had sud- 
denly changed into a tall, quiet man looking 
down at her coldly. 

‘^Ernest, is that the truth?” 

‘‘Elise, I think I have nothing more to say 
to you. Good-bye.” 

‘"Oh, have I lost him again?” whispered 
Elise, all alone. 

Back at the Diller place Ernest drove 
around to the rear door, thinking to avoid 
Robin on the front porch. But Robin’s 
wheeled chair came thundering through the 
broad hall. 

“Well?” called Robin; “well?” 

“Nothing!” answered Ernest succinctly, 
not daring to approach Robin or meet his 
burning eyes of scorn. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 107 

‘‘Your dinner’s in the oven, Ernest,” 
called Lucy cheerily from the kitchen; 
“we’re all through.” 

That afternoon a brief shower had dis- 
pelled the guests, so that it was earlier than 
usual when Ernest and Lucy had finished 
their work and had wandered down to the 
gate. They stood looking westward. Ernest 
was very quiet. 

“There’s Oily Holmes,” remarked Lucy, 
“coming this way.” 

The rattling buckboard drew up. “Even- 
in’, everybody,” Oily greeted them ; then he 
glanced keenly from Lucy’s clear face to 
Ernest’s clouded one. “Told her?” he asked. 

“I’ll have to pretty soon,” said Ernest, 
arms folded upon the fence rail. 

“Told me what?” demanded Lucy. 

“I’ll go along up to Robin till you get it 
over,” said Oily, striding up the bricked walk. 

“Told me what, Ernest ?” again demanded 
Lucy. 

Ernest faced about bravely. “Come back 


io8 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


up here to the spring and Fll tell you, 
Lucy—’’ 

Up there he began, ‘‘It was n’t only the 
rain that kept people away to-day, Lucy, — ” 
But mildly as he tried to tell the facts, Lucy 
had grasped them almost before they were 
out, and had jumped from the swing. 

“I must go and stop it. Right away! 
We’ll take Oily’s team and go right to the 
village. I must stop her! Why, I must make 
money, and so she must n’t. I have to make 
money for Robin. Who is she, Ernest ? ” 

“A stranger here,” he heard himself an- 
swer. “I did n’t ask her name.” 

“Ernest, jump up! Hurry! Come! What 
makes you wait? What makes you look at 
me like that ? Don’t you suppose I can stop 
her? Are n’t you going with me, Ernest?” 

He stood looking down at her. “Yes,” he 
said at last, “if anybody can stop her, you 
can. Yes, I’m coming with you, Lucy.” 

Lucy was silent for half the way, then she 
suddenly cried, “Oh, dear!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 109 

‘^What is it, Lucy?’^ 

“I wish I were your sister!’’ 

“Why?” 

“She’d know what to say, and I don’t 
know what I ’m going to say to this strange 
lady.” 

“You seem to think a good deal about my 
sister, Lucy.” 

“Because I never saw a young lady like 
her. Then I often think how she must be 
missing you, Ernest.” 

There was a long silence, again broken by 
Lucy, “We’re almost there, and I’m fright- 
ened, Ernest; suppose I can’t stop it?” 

“Wait and see, Lucy.” 

“Ernest?” 

“Yes.” 

“Now that this has happened, you’ll 
surely stay and help me, won’t you? Stay 
till the summer people have all gone?” 

“You said just now my sister must be 
missing me, Lucy.” 

“ Ye-e-es, but I, I need you. A young lady 


no THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


like your sister could n’t ever need anybody, 
could she?” 

The horse had slowed up. Ernest leaned 
out and flecked at the dusty weeds with his 
whip. 

‘‘You’ll stay and help me now, Ernest?” 

Ernest thrust the whip into its socket with 
a clang. He sat as straight as if his back were 
of steel. 

“I promise to help you as long as you need 
me, Lucy!” 

“And then after that you can go back to 
your sister,” Lucy answered, speaking to her 
conscience. “Why are you stopping here, 
Ernest?” 

“ I ’m going to let you get out and go on to 
the tea-room alone. I ’ll come pretty soon.” 

It was still clear twilight out of doors when 
Lucy knocked at the hall door of the new tea- 
room. Some one, who might have been sit- 
ting within, came quickly to the door. Lucy, 
in her shrunken white dress against the 
dusky hall, stood motionless. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE in 


‘‘You!” she whispered, “you! My young 
lady!” 

Tall Elise held out her hand, “rm so glad 
you came to call on me,” she said, while her 
tired eyes brightened; “I have n’t forgotten 
you or that afternoon in June.” 

“But I didn’t know it was going to be 
you!” Still Lucy did not move. 

“But it is, you see,” answered Elise, 
laughing; “so won’t you come in and sit 
down? I’m so glad to see you!” 

Lucy moved inside, but she did not sit 
down. Her gray eyes, grown big and strange, 
never left Elise’s face. “But I don’t know 
whether you’re going to be glad to see me 
when I tell you why I came.” 

Tenderness softened the twinkle in Elise’s 
eyes, “Sit down, anyway, for I do not think 
it can be so very dreadful, whatever it was 
you came about.” 

Then, as Lucy’s round-eyed silence con- 
tinued, Elise went on, “Is it still so beautiful 
at your old farm as it was in June?” 


112 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

Lucy’s grave face flashed to brightness. 
“You thought it was beautiful at home?” 
she asked. 

“Oh, yes! I hope it is all just the same, 
that peaceful old place. I hope you will 
never change a thing there.” 

“It isn’t quite the same now as it was 
when you saw it,” hesitated Lucy, thinking 
to go on thence to stating her purpose in 
coming; but she could not, quite. She gazed 
with wondering eyes upon Elise ’s tea-room. 
Elise had been amusing herself by trying 
the effect of a few lighted candles on the 
tables. 

“Such cute little tables and chairs!” cried 
Lucy; “and what pretty little sugar bowls 
and pitchers! — and the doilies! Are those 
pictures on the walls? They don’t look — ” 

“They are Japanese prints; — just cheap 
ones, but I thought the colors looked pretty 
with all the green and white. I wanted the 
room to look cool, because I am afraid it 
really is rather warm.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 113 

‘‘It’s all very different,” sighed Lucy. 

“Different from what?” queried Elise. 

“Different from mine!” 

But at this instant both girls started at a 
familiar step in the hall. Ernest, without 
waiting for an answer to his knock, entered 
the room resolutely. In all her flooding joy 
at seeing him return, Elise failed to note 
Lucy’s quick words to him, “I have n’t done 
it yet!” 

Instead, as soon as her first glad cry, “You 
have come back!” had broken forth, Elise 
remembered her visitor, whose name she 
realized she did not know, and said simply, 
“This is my brother.” Ernest, striving to 
carry off a strained situation with levity, 
swept Lucy a bow, saying, “Good-evening, 
Miss Diller.” Then he went back to one of 
the little tables in the shadow, where he sat 
watching the girls’ faces while he toyed with 
the sugar tongs. 

Elise, glowing with the happiness that had 
come unexpectedly after her strange day, 


1 14 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

was trying to think of some topic to drive the 
worry from her little visitor’s face, but she 
had no such opportunity. 

Lucy sat forward in her chair, clasping her 
dimpled hands so hard upon her handkerchief 
that the finger-tips turned purple. 

“Miss Ray, I sell refreshments, too, now, 
since your auto came that afternoon. I have 
tables under the pine trees. More and more 
people have come every day, until to-day, 
when you opened this room.” 

“Oh, I did not know!” cried Elise. 

“And I didn’t know either about you. 
But as soon as I did know, to-night, I came 
right here.” 

“I am sorry.” 

“I am sorry, too,” said Lucy. 

Beneath Lucy’s intense eyes Elise tried to 
smile. “I suppose we’ll both have to make 
the best of it.” 

“There can’t be any best of it I Miss Ray, 
you’ll just have to stop!” 

“My dear child!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 115 

‘‘Yes/’ nodded Lucy, “don’t you see 
you’ll have to stop?” 

“I’m afraid I don’t!” 

“You are rich, and you are doing it just 
for fun!” 

“Oh!” 

“And I am poor, and I am doing it for 
home and Robin!” 

“But, child, think of my side, too. I’ve 
bought all these things. I ’ve only begun. I 
can’t stop. You can surely see that.” 

“Not when you know how it is with me ?” 

“My dear, — I don’t even know your 
name, though I made up one for you, — re- 
member that you don’t know how it is with 
mer 

“My name is Lucy. Miss Ray, when one 
has gone into a business for the sake of a 
home and for the sake of some one one 
loves?” 

“Then, Lucy, suppose I, too, had gone 
into a business for the sake of a home and for 
the sake of some one I loved?” 


ii6 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


‘"Did you?” queried Lucy wonderingly; 
“but, Miss Ray, you don’t need to. And I 
don’t know of any other way of making 
money.” 

“I do need to! And, since I’ve put all my 
savings into this, I don’t know of any other 
way to make money, either.” 

Lucy’s hands slowly unclasped and she 
leaned back in her chair, puzzled and strange 
and tired. At last she said, “Then I think 
business is a very queer thing, and not fun, 
after all. It is really true that you need to do 
it, too ? And that you ’re doing it for some one 
else, like me?” 

“Yes, Lucy.” 

“Do you see what we’re going to do about 
it. Miss Ray?” 

“What I said before; — we’ll have to make 
the best of it, I’m afraid; each one of us get 
what customers she can.” 

“But you have such a pretty room and 
such pretty things, and you know how,” 
mused Lucy. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 117 

^‘And you have the beautiful cool place 
under the pines/’ Elise reassured her. 

‘‘And I can make things to eat!” Lucy 
cried. 

Elise started, her eyes widening and her 
lips breathless, “ So you can. I remember. 
And you can make preserves, too: I remem- 
ber how good they smelled. I can’t make a 
thing. But I ’ll learn.” 

“I’ll teach you. Miss Ray!” 

“ Give away your secrets to a rival, Lucy ? ” 
Elise smiled and shook her head. 

“Oh,” said Lucy, “there it is again. I 
don’t like business, after all ! Even if we have 
to make the best of it, I can’t bear to do any- 
thing that seems to be going against my 
young lady.” 

“And I — I can’t bear to do anything that 
seems to be going against my Little Peace!” 

“What do you mean. Miss Ray?” 

“I mean that ever since that afternoon I 
saw you on the porch under the honeysuckle. 
I’ve called you my ‘Little Peace.’” 


ii8 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


‘‘Miss Ray, does it mean, do you mean, 
that you liked me the way I liked you?’’ 

“Did you, dear?” 

“You were different from anybody I’d 
ever seen.” 

“So were you — I’ve envied you, there at 
that old place.” 

“You liked it so that you can see how I 
love it, can’t you. Miss Ray, and why I must 
work not to lose it, and for Robin?” 

“There is danger of your losing it, Lucy?” 

“Yes, and oh, it seems as if I could never 
leave it, perhaps to go wandering about 
from place to place again. You couldn’t un- 
derstand how afraid I am of ever leaving 
it.” 

“I can understand, Lucy! I don’t want 
you to lose it 1 I — I don’t suppose there ’s 
business enough for two tea-rooms, two 
separately?” 

“I don’t believe so. And, Miss Ray,” 
Lucy pleaded, “I am doing it for somebody 
else! I can’t give it up!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 119 

Elise’s head sank back on her hand which . 
rested on her chair-arm. Her voice was low 
and weary, ‘'O Lucy, it is because I am doing 
it for somebody else that I can’t give up 
either!” Lower still to herself she murmured, 
‘‘I might lose him!” 

Then from the dusky table behind her a 
voice spoke at her ear, ‘‘Elise, you would not 
lose him!” 

Elise lifted her head quickly, but she did 
not turn about, for Ernest had said enough. 
She rose and went and stood looking at her 
samovar in the corner. 

‘‘My precious samovar,” she murmured, 
“and all my pretty things!” 

“Miss Ray, you do see how I must keep 
my home, don’t you ? How can I give up ?” 

Elise turned about and stood looking down 
into Lucy’s face, “Nobody could do any- 
thing to hurt you, Lucy! I can give up! You 
shall keep your home. Little Peace! I — 
I’ll pack up. I can find something else to 
do!” 


120 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

Ernest’s chair fell as he sprang to his feet. 
‘‘Elise, you’re a brick!” Elise had never 
seen his face like that. 

But Lucy, too, had jumped up, had run to 
Elise, ^'Miss Ray, are you crying?” 

“No, indeed, dear; that’s something I got 
over long ago.” 

“Well, if you’re not,” Lucy suddenly 
sobbed, “I am!” 

“My dear, my dear, why?” 

“ Because, after begging you and begging 
you, now I can’t let you! Oh, I don’t like 
business if business is like this! I can’t let 
you go away because you’re my young 
lady!” 

“But, dear — ” 

Suddenly Lucy dried her eyes and looked 
at Elise. “I can’t let you go away. I was 
always watching for you to come back. Miss 
Ray — it — it would n’t be so much money 
for either of us, but it would be some, 
enough, perhaps, if we tried hard ! You said 
there was n’t business enough for two tea- 



it’s the best plan that ever was thought of 





THE OLD DILLER PLACE lai 


rooms separately — ^would n’t there be busi- 
ness enough for one together? I mean — 
what do you call it? — a partnership?” 

‘‘You’re a brick, too, Lucy!” Ernest 
cried; then lower, “but I knew that before!” 

“You could bring your pretty tables and 
things,” Lucy went on. 

“And you have a beautiful spot for it, out 
there,” Elise hesitated, pondering. 

“And I can make cake!” 

“And I can’t!” 

“And you would n’t have to go away. 
You could come and live with us.” 

“It’s the best plan ever thought of, 
Elise!” urged Ernest. 

Elise turned to him, “You would help me, 
Ernest? You came back to-night to tell me 
you would help me, your sister, at last?” 

“Of course he’ll help!” cried Lucy; 
“hasn’t he helped me for three weeks? 
Hasn’t he promised to help me all the rest of 
the summer?” 

Slowly Elise’s hands that had been clasp- 


122 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


ing Lucy’s dropped. Slowly she turned from 
the face of her “Little Peace” to the face of 
her brother. Her voice was not angry, but 
very strange, “So it has all been for Lucy!” 


CHAPTER VI 


O NCE more the dusty road was bring- 
ing wonders to old Robin Diller. 
Fully as he had been prepared on the evening 
before by Lucy and Ernest, still there was 
for him something strange and mysterious 
in that cavalcade as he slowly watched it 
draw near on that pleasant August morning. 
Lucy’s voice, singing as she prepared an 
upper room for Elise’s occupancy, floated 
down to him. 

It had been a strange summer for Robin, 
strange ever since that June afternoon when 
he had seen that new expression in Lucy’s 
eyes. Always before that each failure of his 
experiments with the old farm had made him 
only more venturesome and hopeful toward 
the next suggestion of the next agent. He 
had meant that fall to put in a wonderful 
engine that should turn the churn and the 


124 the old diller place 

washing-machine and the wood-saw and the 
thresher in the barn, but nobody would ever 
hear of that engine now, and for Robin there 
would be no more agents, no more experi- 
ments, for in his little Lucy’s eyes he had 
read the same pity for him that she had for 
the twins. Though his tongue had continued 
bravely ferocious, Robin had given up on 
that June afternoon and known that he was 
old. 

Yet Robin was unconquerably a boy, and 
however he might bluster and protest, he 
loved the excitement of the afternoons, when 
the old road brought people and chatter and 
the clink of dishes and the clink of coins to 
the silent old farm place. Robin knew that 
he need never again sit on his old piazza 
bored to death. But was he equally glad of 
the invasion, by this unknown brother and 
sister, of his little Lucy’s quiet life? 

Once more a lumbering vehicle halted just 
below the terrace. It was Oily Holmes’s 
carting wagon, and it was piled high with 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 125 

small tables, chairs, boxes, trunks. On the 
front seat Elise had been chatting away 
with Oily. From the back, equally sociable, 
Ernest and Jacob Simms dangled their long 
legs together. Elise had no trouble in getting 
people to help her move out of the village! 
Oily and Jacob with Ernest had accomplished 
much in an hour, and here were Elise and all 
her belongings being unloaded at Robin’s 
door. 

Elise came running up the terrace steps 
to speak to Robin. Ernest, following, stood 
watching her for a moment with bright, 
curious eyes. There was a scurry of light 
steps down the stairs, and Lucy was standing 
there holding out both hands in welcome. 
Robin glanced from the trim elegance of 
Elise to Lucy. Elise wore a pongee frock 
with glints of blue embroidery and a simple 
hat wound with a blue scarf. Lucy had on 
her long blue pinafore cut square about her 
bare white throat, and her sleeves were rolled 
high, and she had a great white dusting-cap 


126 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


on her head. Curiously Robin noted the dif- 
ference between this slim, stylish sister of 
Ernest’s and his little farm girl. 

But Elise was speaking eagerly. ‘‘You 
don’t mind my coming, do you, Mr. Diller? 
It is so good of you to let me come — here!” 
And she gazed about her with shining eyes. 

“ Remember the spring-house, Elise ? ” Ern- 
est broke in — “how the ferns and the silver 
weed hang over the water? And the swing, 
— you did n’t sit in the swing, nor stop quite 
long enough to hear the wind in the pine 
trees. And you never went inside the house 
at all that day. Oh, we’ve got lots to show 
you, sis!” 

Humor twitched at Robin’s mouth as he 
listened to the cool appropriation in that 
young man’s we've got lots to show you!” 
Ah, they were just youngsters, these two 
young people, for all their fashionable man- 
ners and fashionable attire, — youngsters 
who’d never known a home! 

“I hope you’ll feel at home. Miss Ray,” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 127 

Robin spoke; — "‘your brother, he’s got 
used to us, and we’re getting used to him, I 
guess.” For the first time Ernest’s eyes met a 
twinkle in Robin’s. 

"T hope you’ll be happy here,” said Lucy. 

Elise, holding Lucy’s hands, looked down 
with some amusement at the round-eyed, 
childish admiration. 

“Yes, childie, surely.” 

“We’ll try to take good care of you,” said 
Lucy. And Elise, for all the comical cap and 
the young, young face, could not help feeling 
the dignity of the little lady of the house. 
She was unconscious of the scrutiny in her 
brother’s eyes. 

But now Oily and Jacob were clamoring 
for directions from Elise as they unloaded. In 
a twinkling things were happening fast under 
Elise’s generalship. Ernest was dispatched 
to take down the scrawled “Afternoon re- 
freshments for all,” and to hammer Elise’s 
neat signboard to the gateposts. Elise’s eyes 
had met Ernest’s comprehendingly when she 


128 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


had first seen the rough tables and benches 
under the pines. In a jiffy she had Oily and 
Jacob removing these and setting up her 
little chairs and tables instead. Elise had 
grasped all the awkwardness of Lucy’s meth- 
ods in a moment. 

“Do you have to go into the kitchen for 
everything, or away over to the spring- 
house? That must take too long. We ought 
to have serving-tables handy, and a place 
to stand the ice-cream freezers, but we 
must contrive some kind of a screen to con- 
ceal these operations. Here, we can knock 
up a kind of fence with these pine boards — 
you understand how, Mr. Holmes and Mr. 
Simms ? Then I can fix this green denim over 
it, and we’ll drape some vines over the top 
and stand bowls of ferns below — it will be 
both pretty and useful; you’ll see!” 

Oily and Jacob might mutter comments, 
but they appreciated Elise’s efficiency and 
obeyed her. Tactfully Elise sorted out from 
Lucy’s china the old and beautiful from the 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 129 

recently shop-bought, and combined it with 
her own. In two hour’s time Elise had 
wrought wonders. Lucy, busy with baking 
in the kitchen, came running down from 
time to time to stand in helpless admiration 
before Elise’s transformations. 

‘‘Oh, how pretty!” she exclaimed, “and 
how different I I never could have thought of 
all these things. I always knew you knew 
how to do everything.” 

Jacob and Ernest and Oily in a pause of 
their labors stood listening and looking. 

“Yes,” drawled Jacob, “it’s pretty as the 
young lady’s fixed it. But folks can’t eat 
chairs nor tables, nor yet china and ferns and 
flowers. When it comes to feedin’ folks. I’ll 
bet on Luce!” 

“So ’ll I!” cried Oily. 

“And I!” rang Ernest’s voice. 

Aglow with accomplishment though she 
was, Elise, looking from one face to another, 
understood that she was regarded as a bit of 
an interloper. 


130 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘"Don’t you like it better this way, 
Ernest?” she asked, a little wistfully. 

“You must have thought it was awfully 
‘country,’ before, Ernest,” said Lucy, also a 
little wistfully. 

Extracting himself from the dilemma, 
Ernest said, “It’s the place that makes the 
thing go really, up here on the hill under the 
trees ; that ’s what brings the people, that and 
Lucy’s grub.” 

“Oh!” said Elise. 

“Anyway,” cried Lucy, “I think it’s per- 
fectly beautiful the way you’ve fixed it!” 

“I’m glad you think so,” answered Elise; 
“and also” — she smiled a little — “the 
boys are right; I can’t do what you can.” 

“You two are going to make a fair enough 
team,” said Oily Holmes with conviction. 

When the heavier work of the rearrange- 
ments was accomplished. Oily and Jacob 
went trundling back to business in the vil- 
lage, and Ernest went up to the house. By 
and by he whistled from the kitchen door to 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 13 1 

Elise, summoning her to leave off the last 
touches over which she lingered. Just within 
the kitchen door Elise paused, restraining an 
exclamation at the picture. Against the op- 
posite door and window showed the sunny- 
back yard and the morning-glories of the 
eastern porch. By contrast the interior, with 
its dark wainscoting and floor and rafters, 
seemed dusky, and against its brown back- 
ground forms stood out, — Ernest busy 
with something in a bowl, old Davy and 
Danny turning from the sink drying their 
hands to greet the stranger, and smiling va- 
cantly, and Lucy moving about, directing 
the three in her straight blue, her face 
flushed and a stray sunbeam catching the 
gold of her hair. 

never meant her to come in by the 
kitchen way,’^ Lucy reproached Ernest ; “ I ’ll 
take you right up to your room, Miss Ray. 
You haven’t had time before and dinner’s 
nearly ready.” 

Through the darkened dining-room with 


132 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

its gleam of silver and dull mahogany, a 
room unchanged for generations, they passed 
into the broad hall, and up the broad worn 
steps of the stair past the insistent old clock. 

“Tell me, Lucy,’’ asked Elise; “don’t you 
have any woman to help you here?” 

“I have just the boys.” 

“The boys?” 

“Davy and Danny and Ernest.” Then, 
showing an open door, “This is Ernest’s 
room. He likes it, and here is your room. 
It ’s a twin to Ernest’s, but it has the western 
view. Do you think you’ll like it. Miss 
Ray?” 

“Oh, I do, I do like it!” 

“Right across the hall is my room, ‘moth- 
er’s room.’ If you want anything in the 
night, or feel strange or anything, you can 
just run across and call me. Do you want to 
look in now? It’s ‘mother’s room.’” 

“‘Mother’s room’?” puzzled Elise. 

“Oh, not my mother’s? I haven’t any 
mother. I was just a little girl from the cir- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 133 

cus whom Robin took home. But I Ve al- 
ways had this room. It belonged to Robin’s 
grandmother and his mother, so it’s called 
‘mother’s room.’ See all the old things. I 
brought the spinning-wheel down from the 
attic. I suppose I was silly, but I did n’t 
like to think about it up there all alone 
when it used to be so busy. In that chest 
there are homespun sheets and in the cedar 
chest there are homespun blankets. Are n’t 
the pictures of the boys funny? All three of 
the boys, you see, when they were little. 
And the trundle bed; I still keep it under 
mine. I keep everything just the same. This 
is Robin’s mother’s sewing-table. I keep the 
spools and needles in the same little cubby- 
holes that she did. There isn’t anything 
new in this room except the sewing-machine. 
I had to have that. Is n’t it a nice ‘mother’s 
room’ for me?” 

“It’s a beautiful room, dear, for you,” 
said Elise softly. 

“But I don’t have much time to stay in 


134 the old DILLER PLACE 

it/’ smiled Lucy, except when I’m asleep. 
Right now dinner’s waiting for me. It will be 
ready when you come down, Miss Ray.” At 
the stair Lucy turned and came back, hesi- 
tating at Elise’s door, ‘'Miss Ray?” 

“Yes?” 

“ Don’t you think Ernest is looking better 
since he’s been here? I ’ve tried to take good 
care of him. I try to take care of all our 
boys.” 

Elise, opening her suitcase, did not turn 
around, “I never saw Ernest look so well, 
Lucy.” 

Lucy gave a little quick jump of pleasure, 
then flushed at her audacity in adding as she 
went running off, “And now I’m going to 
take care of you, too!” 

But Elise was looking motionless into the 
mirror, whispering, “But I wanted to take 
care of my own brother myself! I wanted 
to!” 

During that long day the brother and sis- 
ter were far too much occupied to be able to 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 135 

compare impressions. In the evening, how- 
ever, Ernest carried Elise off to watch the 
sunset from the edge of the pine grove. 
Robin and Lucy were glad to be alone on the 
porch. 

‘‘Is n’t she lovely, Robin?” cried Lucy. 

“Well enough,” admitted Robin. 

“And she helps me lots!” 

“Reckon you help her, too,” said Robin 
jealously; then added, “Yes, she’ll help you; 
to tell the truth, I feel safer ’bout the whole 
thing now she’s here, to help.” 

“Why, did n’t you feel safe enough with 
Ernest to help?” 

“Humph! She is more of a man than he is 
— yet!” 

“O Robin, you do like Ernest now, don’t 
you?” 

Robin twinkled up at her. “I’m coming 
round, Lucy, but I’m watching a bit, that’s 
all. I ’m sure of the sister, anyway.” 

“They both love it here! Isn’t that 
nice?” 


136 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘Yes; and I guess the old place is big 
enough to accommodate another boy and 
girl. And I guess the best thing left to the 
old folks is watching boys and girls, even if 
old folks do feel lively enough for something 
else/’ 

“We did so well this afternoon, did n’t we, 
Robin!” 

“Well enough,” admitted Robin. 

But Elise’s comments to Ernest were not 
equivocal. 

“So you really like them, Elise.? No jolly- 
ing about that?” 

“No jollying. I honestly like them all.” 

“How you did make Robin chuckle with 
your questions at dinner! — ‘Is an Early 
Rose a pig or a chicken or a flower or a vege- 
table’?” 

“Well, I honestly wanted to know. I want 
to know everything about farming. Oh, I 
like it all ! Ernest, is n’t there a haymow 
somewhere? I seem to remember hiding in 
one, once. I could n’t have been more than a 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 137 

baby. Some grown-up person was playing 
with me. It must have been mother."" 

“Lots of things like that have come back 
to me here."" 

“I believe we belong on a farm, Ernest. 
And three weeks ago we were just like any- 
body else at the hotel! It is funny! And the 
funniest part of all is that this seems so 
natural. Yes, I believe we belong on a 
farm."" 

But Ernest"s face had darkened suddenly, 
as he sat hunched against a tree-trunk, clasp- 
ing his knees. 

“Well, it"s a big question in my mind 
whether you and I belong on this farm, 
Elise, doing what we "re doing!"" 

“What, Ernest! Why, I thought that was 
just it, just the miracle these three weeks 
have made in you — that you liked it here, 
‘doing what we"re doing" — just as much as 
I do! — that you "re as happy here as Fm 
going to be."" 

“Going to be?"" 


138 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘Yes/’ replied Elise resolutely, — “going 
to be.” 

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever struck, but 
it can’t go on forever. And I keep thinking 
about uncle.” 

“Why do you?” 

“Come, Elise, you know you’ve never 
been fair to uncle. I suppose I keep thinking 
about him because I ’m fond of him. And you 
know well enough What he’d think of all 
this.” 

“All what?” 

“Our being out of our element. You know 
it’s mighty queer, Elise, really; suppose 
some afternoon a load of Raywood people 
should come motoring over and turn in here. 
It might happen any day, you know. It’s 
only luck that it hasn’t happened before. 
And suppose uncle himself happened to be in 
the load! Imagine his feelings! We owe 
something to his feelings, I suppose. Tell me 
the truth, Elise, if some afternoon you saw 
an auto load of our own set coming in that 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 139 

gate, would n’t you feel like turning tail and 
running?” 

Elise hesitated. 

‘‘Would n’t you, Elise?” 

“I might feel like it,” admitted Elise, “but 
I would n’t do it. I foresaw all that when I 
made up my mind.” 

“Well, I have n’t made up mine. I have n’t 
made up my mind what’s my duty to this 
affair here and what ’s my duty to uncle. I ’ve 
thought and thought.” 

“You seem to have been doing a great deal 
of thinking lately, Ernest.” 

“More than I ever did in my^ife be- 
fore.” 

“Yet you said you’d been in a dream for 
three weeks.” 

“That’s true, too.” 

“ Ernest, would you, could you, go back to 
the old life now ? If that auto load of our set 
came in the gate, would you turn tail and 
run?” 

“I could n’t say. If I did n’t there would 


140 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

be only one thing that would keep me from 
it/’ 

‘‘What?” 

“Lucy.” 

“Oh, Lucy!” 

Ernest turned with fiery eyes. “See here, 
Elise, you’ve been a brick to Lucy; I’ve seen 
that. But I won’t stand that tone of voice 
when you speak of her!” 

“Was there ‘a tone of voice,’ Erne&t?” 

“Yes, and there was ‘a tone of voice’ last 
night when you said, ‘And so it was all for 
Lucy.’” 

Elise was silent. 

“And I don’t mind acknowledging, Elise, 
that it was all for Lucy. Lucy — Lucy’s dif- 
ferent from — all those other girls. I saw that 
in June. Don’t you see it yourself, Elise?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well, then, what makes you look like 
that?” 

“I don’t know. What would uncle think 
of Lucy, Ernest?” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 141 

“Do you care what uncle thinks!"’ 

“Don’t you, Ernest?” 

“Oh, yes, yes, I do! That’s just it! That’s 
what I ’ve been thinking and thinking about. 
Sometimes I’ve a mind to go and tell him all 
about it.” 

“All about what?” 

“About everything here.” 

“I would n’t, not yet.” 

“When?” 

“After we’ve shown what we can do, 
after we’ve made some money and can show 
him we can stand on our own feet.” 

“Say, sis, we’re going to make a howling 
success of this thing. Look at the crowd this 
afternoon. And they’ll come back, — you’ll 
see.” 

“We’re going to succeed, yes.” Elise’s 
voice was low, but her eyes glowed. “Money 
all our own at last!” 

“Lucy could n’t manage a big lot of people 
without you, Elise.” 

“ Lucy ! ” Elise murmured. But as Ernest’s 


142 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

eyes again flashed she added, ‘T did n’t mean 
it; it just jumped out.” 

Ernest stood studying her closely. ‘‘Elise, 
you’re good to Lucy, but do you feel about 
her really as uncle does, that she’s not 
exactly the sort of person we’ve been used 
to?” 

‘‘Decidedly, Lucy is not the sort of person 
we’ve been used to, Ernest.” 

“So you agree with uncle,” said Ernest 
thoughtfully, while his jaw set curiously. 

“But what difference does my opinion 
make? What difference do I make, any- 
way?” Elise could not keep the words 
back. 

Again Ernest looked at her keenly. 

“Elise, you surely know how glad I am to 
have you here!” 

“Are you, truly, Ernest?” 

“Well, rather! You’re sis, are n’t you?” 

“I — hope so!” 

“And we’re going to have a good time of it 
for once in our lives, in a home for once, and 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 143 

making money for once! Cheer up, sis! 
‘Afterwards’ has n’t come yet!” 

Looking at him with a long gaze, Elise said, 
“You are so different, Ernest! If only you 
don’t change!” 

During the busy successful weeks that 
followed, the brother and sister had little 
privacy for serious conversation, and, in 
truth, they did not wish it; the fun and 
novelty were sufficient for each day, and they 
had little desire to face the future that must 
come when the summer season closed. 

One future event, however, caused the 
partners some concern. 

“It’s the middle of August,” Lucy said 
one day, “and still nobody knows who’s to 
have the picnic supper, although the day is 
set for the twenty-eighth. It’s always the 
last big thing of the summer. The Exton 
Tennis Club always has a big outdoor supper 
somewhere, too, early in September. But 
that’s not such a big affair as the I.F.A. 
because, of course, there are n’t a tenth as 


144 the old DILLER PLACE 

many people in the tennis club as there 
are in the Independent Farmers’ Associa- 
tion.” 

“Not so many people,” said Elise, “but 
people who’d be willing to pay more for a 
supper, so that we might make almost as 
much from the tennis club if we could get 
it. Could we, I wonder? That’s why I’ve 
wanted the LF.A. contract to show people 
what we can do! It’s carrying through a big 
contract like that successfully that makes a 
business like ours really famous!” 

“Yes,” agreed Lucy, “but we have n’t got 
the LF.A. yet. I know Jared Coombs wants 
it. He has the hotel at Plymouth Center, 
and a grove near by, and he’s first vice- 
president, if Jacob is president. And Jacob is 
so mysterious. I think Robin knows, but he 
can’t tell. I don’t think he wants us to have 
the contract, anyway. I think he thinks it ’s 
too big a job. I think that’s what’s worry- 
ing him so lately.” 

The LF.A. contract was, indeed, worrying 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 145 

Robin, but there was something else. The 
other worry was a tall young man whose car- 
riage was every day growing straighter, his 
step sturdier, his smile and friendly word 
readier, who was, in fact, every day growing 
more at home. 

‘T don’t know when I’ve taken to a man 
as I did to that Mr. Gray-silk-coat that day in 
June,” Robin mumbled to himself; ‘T must 
do my duty by him!” 

That evening as he sat solitary on the 
porch he called to Ernest passing through the 
hall, ‘‘Young man!” 

“Yes, Mr. Diller, did you wish to speak to 
me?” It was the first time Robin had ever 
summoned Ernest to a tete-a-tete. 

“It’s come to me that it’s about time I 
did my duty by you, Ernest.” 

“Yes, Mr. Diller?” Ernest’s tone was 
frankly puzzled. 

“ Six weeks is a long time.’' 

“It has n’t seemed long.” 

“Six weeks is a long time for a young 


146 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

fellow like you to hold out at a job like 
this. Are n’t you kind of surprised at your- 
self?” 

“When I think about it, yes. But it 
has n’t seemed hard. I’ve liked it.” 

“Liked work? Ever done any before?” 

“No.” 

“Going to keep on?” 

“Going to keep on to the end of the sum- 
mer. Lucy wants me to.” 

“Fixing to keep on with some kind of 
work after that?” 

“I don’t know. That depends. A good 
deal depends, in fact.” 

“Yes,” agreed Robin grimly; “a good deal 
depends from my point of view, too. See 
here, young man, you like Lucy?” 

The brown eyes looked into Robin’s, fear- 
less and frank. “I think you know all about 
that, Mr. Diller.” 

“I think I do,” answered Robin gently; 
“but mind, she does n’t!” 

“It will take a long time,” said Ernest. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE “ 147 

will take till you’re grown up, at 
least!” answered Robin sharply. 

‘T’m grown up nowl” 

Grown up! And I’ll bet you can’t say at 
this minute what you’ll be up to a month 
from now, idling around in autos or earning a 
man’s dinner in a tin pail.” 

‘‘It’s true I don’t know.” 

“Now comes my duty — how long since 
you said good-bye to your uncle?” 

“Six weeks.” 

“Did you say good-bye to him?” 

“No, not exactly.” 

“Why not?” 

“Uncle and I don’t agree.” 

“You mean by that you’re doing some- 
thing he does n’t like?” 

“Yes.” 

“What?” 

“Exactly this: working this way; living 
this way.” 

“He would n’t like it ? Does he know any- 
thing about it?” 


148 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

“No. He would n’t like to know that Elise 
and I are working when he has money. He 
would n’t like his friends to know.” 

“And they don’t know? You’re sure?” 

“Nobody seems to have discovered.” 

“That’s queer,” murmured Robin; add- 
ing, “You’re sure your uncle wouldn’t 
approve?” 

“Sure.” 

“Then there ’s only one thing for you to do, 
Ernest.” 

“What is that?” 

“To go and tell him all about it.” 

“Why,” cried Ernest, “that’s just what 
I said to Elise, but she said that no good 
would come of it.” 

“It’s your business to go.” 

“ I ’ve been meaning to go every day.” 

“But you have n’t got the grit?” 

“I’ll go to-morrow!” answered Ernest. 


CHAPTER VII 


O N the August morning which was still 
early enough to be fresh and cool, Elise 
had brought her spoons out on the front 
step to polish, and was rubbing away close by 
the wheel of Robin’s chair. Ernest, ready to 
take the path across the fields to the station 
in the village, came out on the porch. 

Elise looked up at him while her brows 
puckered with anxiety. 

‘‘You know, Ernest, I don’t see the need of 
your going, just now. There’s no use quar- 
reling with uncle.” 

“I’m not going to.” 

“ Say what you ’ve got to say, young man,” 
warned Robin. 

“I’m going to,” 

Ernest went springing down the terrace 
steps and strode on beneath the maples. 
Thinking of his fine coat of tan and of his 


150 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

vigorous carriage, Elise murmured to a spoon, 
“Ernest is so different.” 

“Is he? Is he?” cried Robin; “that’s 
something we won’t know till he comes back 
to-night! You did n’t want him to go much, 
did you?” 

“I want him to go if he can stand it!” 
Then as she watched, “There! He’s waving 
to Lucy in the kitchen, but Lucy’s busy, and 
he is n’t looking this way.” Then Elise’s 
clouded eyes met Robin’s and dropped, to be 
raised brightly in an instant, as she said, 
“See how my spoons shine!” Elise had no 
intention of discussing Ernest with any one, 
yet a dozen times a day she met something 
in the darting eyes of the strange old man 
that almost betrayed her into astonishing 
confidences. Robin was kept pretty busy 
observing young folks that summer ! 

On the Ra3rwood train, Ernest met several 
acquaintances who congratulated him on his 
sunburned appearance. He parried their 
inquiries as to where he had hidden and he 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 151 

listened to his own voice, slipping back into 
its old easy small talk, as he might have lis- 
tened to a voice in a dream. As he strode up 
the gravel paths of the hotel, that sense of 
dreaminess still continued. Curiously, it was 
the old hotel life and the old Ernest that 
seemed now unreal, and the life of the old 
Diller place the one firm reality. Although 
unhesitating up to the moment, when at the 
very door of his uncle’s sitting-room, Ernest 
found himself demanding why he had come, 
wondering at the fierce impulse to be honest 
with his uncle once and for all, not to have 
a secret from him — except, perhaps, just 
one! 

At that short ‘‘Come in!” Ernest entered. 
The room with its massive furniture and dark 
walls seemed intolerably stuffy. An instant 
the boy stood motionless against the dusky 
door — vivid and eager, and aglow — wait- 
ing. Seated at his desk, Mr. Cope lifted his 
eyes from the envelope he was blotting, and 
a great light wavered in them, then died. 


152 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘I have come back, uncle.” 

“So I see. Funds are out, I suppose.” 

“No, uncle.” 

“Then why did you come?” 

“I wanted to see you, uncle.” 

“Thanks. Considering that you and Elise 
seem to have got along very well for these 
past weeks without your aunt and uncle, I 
feel complimented that you wanted to see 
me!” 

“I hope auntie is all right, uncle?” 

“She is not. She misses Elise.” 

“But you have Celeste?” 

“True. We have Celeste. Nieces and 
nephews are therefore superfluous.” 

“Do you mean, uncle — ” 

“I mean nothing whatever. Of course, in 
fifteen years your aunt has grown somewhat 
accustomed to your presence and Elise’s. 
Your removal was therefore a little unex- 
pected to her.” 

“ But Elise always had a plan of — I mean 
she was always thinking of our having a little 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 153 

home together, some day, of settling down 
and living somewhere/^ 

“Settling down? Humph! Yes, when one 
thinks of it, you and Elise have never had 
so very much opportunity for a permanent 
abiding place. Your aunt and I were discuss- 
ing that matter, only the other day.’’ 

“You were talking about us, then? Uncle, 
does auntie mind — ” 

“ Being deserted ? Oh, I think not. Don’t 
let that matter trouble you, I pray. You 
have come back, I believe you said?” 

“Oh, not to stay! Just to talk with you a 
little while. I have n’t come back to — to be 
on your hands again, uncle!” 

“Ah — so I have become superfluous! 
Might I ask on whose hands you are, then?” 

“Uncle, I am not on any one’s hands! And 
I ’m not going to be ! I ’m on my own hands ! ” 
“So one might judge from their appear- 
ance! Berry-picking, one might surmise, if 
not potato-digging?” 

“Both! And a good deal more besides!” 


154 the old DILLER PLACE 

‘‘And Elise?’’ 

“She's working, too. I couldn't stop 
her." 

“It's a curious sensation, your working." 

“It's a sensation I like. So does Elise." 

“So glad! But has it occurred to either of 
you to think of my sensations about your 
working, and the sensations of our acquaint- 
ance?" 

“I have thought a good deal about you, 
uncle." 

“Thanks again." 

“That's why I came to tell you all about 
it." 

“Why?" 

“Because I wanted you to know. I did n't 
want you to hear by accident. You have a 
right to know about Elise and me before any 
stranger knows. You're our uncle." 

“By marriage!" 

Mr. Cope saw that thrust tell in the quiver 
of Ernest's lips, but also again with that leap 
of light in his eyes he watched Ernest quietly 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 155 

square his shoulders, while he answered with 
steady voice, — 

‘‘Very well, if you prefer to consider your- 
self merely that, uncle. But I have never 
considered you merely that."’ 

“For my life, I don’t see why you have 
n’t!” cried Mr. Cope unexpectedly; “you 
and I have never been exactly intimate.” 

“Not yet, but I’m grown up now.” 

“You are? Since when?” 

“I think since June.” 

“That’s pretty sudden.” 

“Aren’t things always sudden, uncle, — 
provided you’re just ripe for them?” 

“Ripe for what, Ernest?” 

“I hardly understand myself — ripe to be 
different, one way or the other; the way I 
was in June after college, when I did n’t 
know what I was going to do, when I was just 
waiting.” 

“Waiting to see what I would do for you, 
you mean?” 

For the first time Ernest’s eyes dropped; 


156 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

then they were lifted clear and level. ‘‘Yes, 
I suppose that was it, uncle.’’ 

“And you’re still waiting to see what I 
will do?” 

“ I ’m working while I wait.” 

“Against my expressed desires as declared 
some weeks since ! What about your duty to 
— an uncle by marriage?” 

“There are duties to other people, too.” 

“Those other people must be rather 
recent. Might I ask one question about — 
‘those other people,’ apropos of our last con- 
versation? You seemed to have slipped com- 
pletely out of my world for the last weeks — 
therefore, may I ask if those recent ‘other 
people’ are from our class?” 

“No, uncle.” 

“Beneath us?” 

^ “No, uncle.” 

“What, then?” 

“Not beneath, different! Country people 
are different, but there’s a lot to them when 
you come to know them.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 157 

Country people? You suggest a clue; it 
is n’t possible that you’ve betaken yourself 
back to our old farm of June, and the little 
country sis we saw there!” 

‘‘LFncle!” Mr. Cope saw the boy’s fingers 
twitch as they did in Ernest’s rare moments 
of temper, but Ernest’s voice cleared as he 
spoke, ‘T am living there at the old Diller 
place. I never saw such a place for making a 
fellow feel good. Back here at the hotel, I 
don’t know how it is, but I feel all choked up 
again. Elise is there, too. They have an 
open-air tea-room. I am working. I am — a 
‘hired man’! I do everything there is to do 
from taking care of the horse to helping in 
the afternoons, anything that Lucy needs to 
have done.” 

“Lucy is the calico girl?” 

“Yes.” 

“You came in order to tell me all this?” 

“I did n’t want any one else to tell you!” 

“Somebody else did tell me, four weeks 
ago!” 


158 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘Eric Poole!’’ 

“Exactly.” 

“Did he tell everybody here, too?” 

“He told only me, I am thankful to say. I 
have not told any one, not even your aunt.” 

“You are displeased, then, uncle?” 

“I am disgraced!” 

“How?” 

“I am known to have money, to be rich, 
yet my only niece and nephew are to be seen 
by all my acquaintance toiling for their daily 
living. I must appear to the general public as 
extremely generous and kind, since you and 
Elise have abruptly left me, choosing, I must 
say, somewhat curious company instead! — 
and have preferred to make public show of 
your poverty rather than to accept my 
assistance! You and Elise place me in a 
curious light!” 

“We did not mean to.” 

“The question is not whether you meant 
to, but whether you mean to stop?” 

“To stop? Now?” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 159 

‘‘Yes, now! Before Raywood hears of it. 
Your enterprise has n’t been so widely adver- 
tised as to be heard of here. You have not 
done anything on a scale to attract attention. 
I trust you may not.” 

“But—” 

“Ernest, I don’t quite see why you came 
here this morning!” 

“Neither did Elise. It was because I’ve 
kept thinking about you. I wanted you to 
understand.” 

“And do you think I do understand .f*” 

“I’m afraid not, uncle.” 

Quietly the two men faced each other. 
Ernest had slipped into a chair in which he 
sat erect beneath his uncle’s gaze, never in 
all Ernest’s life so keen as at that moment. 

“ It is your intention, Ernest, to go back to 
these ‘other people’.?” 

“I must see them through, uncle!” 

“What would be your feelings if any of 
your Raywood acquaintance should discover 
you acting as ‘hired man’?” 


i6o THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


‘‘Eric Poole did. When I’m at the Diller 
place I don’t seem to mind, somehow, things 
like that. But when I ’m back here, I can see 
how you feel about it all, uncle. Everything 
is very strange this summer, anyway. I 
don’t seem to understand what ’s happening. 
Queer things seem somehow all right.” 

“If you can see how I feel about it all, I 
wonder that you haven’t more regard for 
my feelings!” 

“Do you wish me to give it up, uncle?” 

“If I do, what, then?” 

“Then I suppose I ought to.” 

“But will you?” 

“But there are the — ‘other people’ who 
need me!” 

“I observe that you see clearly it is a ques- 
tion of your duty to those ‘other people’ who 
need you and to an uncle who — ” 

“Who does n’t,” said Ernest. 

“No? No?” mused Mr. Cope. 

“ But if I did give it all up, uncle, I don’t 
believe I could make Elise stop.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE i6i 

“You and Elise seem much more desirous 
of independence than I should ever have 
suspected/’ 

“It’s just that we’d rather earn money 
than take it, uncle.” 

“Since when?” murmured Mr. Cope, — 
“since when?” Then louder, “Well, if that’s 
the case there would seem only one thing to 
do if I disapprove of your present occupation, 
your present surroundings, and your present 
associations.” 

“They’re all right, uncle!” 

“Indeed? Ernest,” — there was a pause 
before Mr. Cope’s thin ironic lips pronounced 
the question, — “what would you say if I 
offered you a position in the bank, with a 
salary sufficient to support both you and 
Elise?” 

“Oh, uncle, uncle, do you really feel that 
way about me?” 

“What way?” 

“I mean — I — why, I thought only 
fathers do that sort of thing!” 


1 62 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


“Well, I don’t happen to have a son.” 

“Uncle!” But Mr. Cope turned his face 
sternly from Ernest’s, so a-quiver with joy. 

“There is a condition, Ernest!” 

“What is it, uncle?” 

“The position in the bank is yours if 
within one week you leave the Diller place 
and promise never again to see it or any one 
on it!” 

Ernest’s face grew slowly white. “And, 
uncle, if I don’t.” 

“If you don’t,” repeated Mr. Cope — “if 
you don’t — well, Ernest, you seem to think 
something of my opinion of you.” 

“I guess there’s only one person’s I care 
for as much.” 

“Elise’s?” 

“No, not Elise’s!” 

“I trust my meaning is sufficiently clear. 
My opinion of you depends on your choice. 
Let me see, to-day is the twenty-first — I 
give you till the twenty-eighth. If on that 
day I see you entering my door as you have 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 163 

done to-day, I shall understand that you 
have given up your ‘other people,’ that you 
are willing to leave off being a ‘hired man’ — 
my nephew! — and to become once more a 
gentleman 1 Why, Ernest, what can you have 
found to keep you — ” 

“I have found something, uncle!” 

“I merely repeat, Ernest, that all our 
future relations, yours and mine, depend on 
your choice.” 

Ernest sat very still, clasping the leather 
chair-arms with tense fingers. The room was 
so silent that Mr. Cope’s watch could be 
heard, as slowly, slowly, it ticked away one 
minute, two, three. Then Mr. Cope moved 
abruptly, “I ’m sorry to seem inhospitable, 
Ernest, but I should advise that you with- 
draw before your aunt returns from her 
morning drive. It might avoid explana- 
tions.” 

Straight and very pale Ernest rose to 
leave. 

“You understand, Ernest, that I am ask- 


1 64 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

ing you to give up once and for all your 
present associations?’’ 

“I understand what you ask, perfectly, 
uncle, — but I think you ask it because you 
do not understand. Good-bye.” 

‘‘We meet on the twenty-eighth, perhaps. 
Good-bye.” 

As the door closed, the irony dropped like 
a mask from Mr. Cope’s face, leaving it 
drawn with wistfulness. Looking toward the 
doorway, where a moment before the boy’s 
face had been, he muttered, “I wouldn’t 
have believed in the miracle if I had n’t seen 
for myself the place and the little girl. Even 
now I don’t dare to believe, — don’t dare to, 
yet!” 

The time-table proved so perverse that 
Ernest had to linger until late afternoon. He 
spent the time trudging the lanes and paths 
about Raywood, well out of reach of ac- 
quaintances. From a distance he could see 
the familiar tennis courts and golf links, the 
gay pennants on the sailboats on the lake, 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 165 

and, deep in trees, the red turrets of the hotel. 
He was thinking so hard that he was barely 
conscious of the time. 

When at last he reached home the twilight 
had grown dusky. He was aware of an eager 
group on the piazza, and of busy tongues. 
Lucy and Elise turned toward him. 

‘‘Why, Ernest, how tired you are!’’ cried 
his sister; “what’s the matter?” 

“I know what’s the matter!” exclaimed 
Lucy; “he’s hungry and he does n’t know it. 
Come right out to the kitchen, Ernest, and 
let me get you something to eat.” 

At the end of the long kitchen table, pol- 
ished rich and dark by time, Lucy spread a 
tempting supper, then she sat down at the 
other end, resting her round elbows on the 
table, and bowing her chin on her palms. The 
light of the low glass lamp fell on the clear 
brow, the parted hair, and on the quiet eyes. 

“Oh, but this is good!” exclaimed Ernest. 

“Which?” asked Lucy eagerly; “the 
sponge cake or the cold ham or the jelly?” 


1 66 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘This/’ repeated Ernest without explana- 
tion. 

“ Have you had a hard day, Ernest ? ” 

“Somewhat!” 

“But now it’s over,” said Lucy cozily, 
“and now you’re all safe home again,” she 
smiled. “Are you glad to be home again, 
Ernest?” 

“Yes! Hotels are rotten! They make you 
feel as if you were somebody else. You can’t 
find yourself. You don’t know where you’re 
at.” 

“We missed you.” 

“You missed me, Lucy?” 

“There were so many people, and you 
know I ’m not very quick,” explained Lucy. 
“Oh!” 

“To-night I could hardly wait until you 
got back.” 

“Neither could I!” 

“We’ve got it, Ernest! We’ve got it! 
Jacob and Oily are out on the porch. We’ve 
all been talking so hard. We’ve really got 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 167 

the 1 . F. A. contract, and it’s just one week 
from to-day, on the twenty-eighth.” 

‘‘Just one week! The twenty-eighth!” 
Ernest repeated dreamily. 

“Why, Ernest, aren’t you glad, glad? 
Just think what we’ll make!” 

“And what we’ll lose!” Looking haggard 
again, Ernest gazed into the dark corner by 
the pump. 

“Why, Ernest, what’s the matter? How 
can we lose anything when you and Elise are 
here to help! Elise is awfully happy about 
it!” 

Out on the porch, Ernest was glad of the 
darkness that hid his face, but Robin was not 
glad of it at all. Jacob and Oily, Elise and 
Lucy were all talking so earnestly that only 
Ernest noted Robin’s utter silence, and only 
Robin noted Ernest’s, and wondered, won- 
dered, wondered ! Too much preoccupied to 
hear all the plans, Ernest was aware that 
Jacob Simms broke into them every little 
while with his chuckling boast — '“And I 


1 68 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


told Jared Coombs you could get ready in a 
week and even so beat any hotel in the coun- 
try with your management; ! We ’ll show him ! 
We’ll show him!” 

It seemed hours before Ernest could get 
hold of Elise alone, down in the fragrant 
darkness of the pine grove, by Lucy’s swing. 
With an effort Elise drew her thoughts from 
her glowing plans, for even in the starlight 
her eyes were sparkling with all a general’s 
excitement before a battle. 

“Was it very bad, Ernest, seeing uncle?” 

“Pretty bad!” 

“Well, no matter!” cried Elise, “we’ll 
cheer up, an3rway! We’ve got this contract, 
and we’ll show uncle what we can do! We’ll 
be advertised now. We’ll do something to 
attract attention! We’re going to make a 
howling success of this thing!” 

Ernest uttered a short groan. 

“No, no, Ernest,” cried Elise, answering 
his thought as she supposed; “uncle won’t be 
angry, he’ll be pleased. He admires effi- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 169 

ciency above everything, efficiency in any- 
thing. I am going to show him what you can 
do!’’ 

‘‘What you can do, you mean.” 

“It will need all we both can do if we’re to 
feed three hundred people at one sitting, and 
in a style they’ll remember and talk about, 
so that we’ll get all the supper contracts in 
this country!” 

“Elise, you’re awfully excited. You’re 
mistaken, too, about uncle. He’s going to be 
furious when he hears of it.” 

“Have n’t we a right to make a success of 
our business ! Oh, when I feel all that I can 
plan and do and carry through! I’ve been 
bottled up all my life and now I am free!” 

“Elise, auntie misses you!” 

Elise’s tone changed sharply. “No,” she 
said wistfully, “she doesn’t, no, not really. 
I should never have wanted to be free like 
this, never, if auntie had ever really cared, 
and uncle, if they had ever really cared for 
us, Ernest.” She stopped a moment, then her 


1 70 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

voice rang, But I ’m going to make uncle 
do you justice, Ernest. Fm going to show 
him what you can do. When he sees what 
you’re willing to do, and how well — then 
I’m sure he’ll take you into the bank, I’m 
sure he will!” 

‘‘Elise, uncle has offered me the position 
in the bank, at a salary large enough for you 
and me to have that home you want.” 

‘‘And did he know what you ’ve been doing 
all summer?” 

“He has known all along.” 

Elise clasped her hands. “Then I’m 
right I I ’m right ! I ’m right 1 ” 

“He makes a condition, Elise.” 

“What?” 

“That within a week I leave this place for 
good and all.” 

Elise’s first thought rushed forth, “Within 
a week! Before the twenty-eighth?” 

“I shall lose the bank if I stay till the 
twenty-eighth!” 

“O Ernest, what shall we do?” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 171 

‘"It is rather a serious decision/" admitted 
Ernest grimly; “what would you advise me 
to do?” 

“Advise!"" exclaimed Elise, “advise, Er- 
nest! I wanted that bank position for you 
more than anything else in the world. It"s 
your chance in life!"" 

“And therefore you advise me to leave 
everything here — and every one? You un- 
derstand that"s what uncle asks?"" 

“How strange/" whispered Elise to herself, 
“ that he should ask it after he has seen you ! "" 

“What is your advice, Elise?"" 

It was a long time before Elise spoke ; her 
voice seemed to come from far, far away. 
“My advice is simply that you make the 
choice that you think is right."" 

“You said you wanted me to have that 
bank job more than you wanted anything 
else in the world."" 

“But perhaps there is something I want 
for you more, now,"" murmured Elise. 

The wind sang softly through the pines 


172 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

and the great stars burned far above them. 
In the silence the noise of the August insects 
grew loud. The house on the knoll, shadowy 
in the blue starlight, showed but one lighted 
window, Lucy’s window in the “mother’s 
room.” 

“It’s good here,” said Ernest, very low. 

“Yes.” 

“I say, Elise— ” 

“Yes?” 

“You’ve been here long enough, Elise, 
now, to know Lucy. Do you still feel about 
her the way you did at first?” 

“I’ve been here long enough to know 
Lucy now,” admitted Elise quietly. 

“Elise, tell me, if I should — decide to 
stay here — would you stand by me, against 
uncle, stand by me — and Lucy?” 

“Ernest,” Elise’s voice was firm, “that’s 
something I decline to tell you; I refuse to do 
anything to influence your decision.” 

“Oh,” he cried, “then that means you are 
still jealous!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 173 

^‘Does whispered Ellse. She leaned 
her head against the rope of the swing, feeling 
suddenly tired and very lonely. As Ernest 
did not speak she said at last. ‘‘ It is a hard 
decision, Ernest. What do you think you 
will do?^’ 

Ernest’s voice rang. “That is something I 
decline to tell you!” 


CHAPTER VIII 


N ever had the old Diller place so jus- 
tified a claim to ample hospitality as 
on the afternoon of the annual meeting of the 
Independent Farmers’ Association. One half 
of the great tree-dotted lawn that stretched 
below the terrace had given welcome to three 
hundred people. The other half of the lawn/ 
the one on Robin’s right, was fenced and 
barred mysteriously. The voice of Jared 
Coombs had been the only one to dissent 
from Jacob Simms’s plan to assemble at the 
Diller place, and to give the supper contract 
to little Lucy Diller; for to most of the com- 
pany Lucy was as well known as was Lucy’s 
house. As for that house it had been a land- 
mark for generations, standing there on the 
shady knoll that crowned the vista of the 
avenue of maples, an old pillared house grow- 
ing shabbier with the changing years, but not 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 175 

on that account the less friendly and familiar. 
As familiar as the house itself, to all who 
traveled that dusty country road and who 
peered up beneath the arching branches, was 
the figure of the little old man in the wheeled 
chair, alert to recognize all acquaintances and 
to wave them distant greeting. 

Robin had refused to have his wheeled 
chair carried down below the terrace where 
he might hear the speeches ; he preferred the 
vantage-ground of the piazza whence he 
might view the barred right-hand lawn, for 
he found matter of interest there. Besides, 
Robin had his hands full with the oversight 
of the old twins. Elise had gently but firmly 
declined to have them underfoot on that 
day, and in all their scared excitement at the 
unaccustomed invasion, it required all Rob- 
in’s stock of ingenuity and licorice to keep 
them quietly by his side. 

The company came swarming up to Robin 
by little groups, before the business meeting 
opened. They wished to exhibit to him 


176 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

recently acquired wife or husband or round- 
eyed baby, or to receive his low word of sym- 
pathy with loss or hard luck, for Robin had 
always been one to have many visitors, and 
there was no one whom he had ever met that 
he had forgotten. 

In and out among the crowd that surged 
over lawn and terrace Lucy moved, welcom- 
ing each with that little manner of hers that 
was so childlike and yet stately. In all the 
flurry Elise had found time to give the finish- 
ing touches to Lucy’s dress. In the glinting 
braids that crossed the parting she had 
wound some sweet peas. To the white frock 
that Myra Drum had striven so hard to make 
modern she had added an old-fashioned 
touch in a broad pink sash; with the sleeves 
cut just above the elbow and the round neck, 
Lucy looked like a little Greenaway girl. 
Suddenly, as she fastened a sweet pea, Elise’s 
eyes had been blinded with tears, and she had 
pressed the lovely uplifted face to hers with 
a kiss and a hug that hurt. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 177 

“Why, Elise!” Lucy had said, wondering, 
“what is it?’’ 

“Oh, nothing,” Elise had replied with a 
quick smile ; “nothing except that I ’m a little 
fond of you, you know! Run along, dearie. 
And if that wretched Jared Coombs turns 
up, do let me know instantly. He promised 
to bring them by noon!” 

When Lucy came up to Jacob Simms down 
by the gate, he looked her over with proud 
eyes, and muttered audibly to his wife, 
“Looks like a sweet pea herself, don’t she? 
our Luce!” 

“Jacob,” asked Lucy anxiously, “where do 
you suppose Jared Coombs is ? He promised ! 
And what in the world can we do if he does n’t 
come!” 

“Don’t you worry none, Lucy,” said 
plump Mrs. Simms comfortably; “Jared ’ll 
get here. We don’t eat till five, and it ain’t 
but two now. Give him a little time. They’re 
fixing the roads over his way; maybe that’s 
what keeps him.” 


1 78 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

^‘He ought to bring them by four at the 
very latest/’ said Lucy, moving away. 

‘‘Jared’s mean, but he would n’t play no 
trick like that, would he?” inquired Jacob of 
his wife. 

“Should hope not! But there’s no tellin’. 
Jake, after you give Lucy the contract, you 
had no call to give her any advice ’bout where 
to buy her supplies!” 

“Now look a-here, Minnie, I knew what I 
was doin’. You know Jared was mad as a 
wet hen ’bout losin’ his supper job. I 
thought ’t would sweeten him up a bit if 
Luce ordered her chickens of him. He’s 
crazy over the poultry farm he just started. 
Cash down for sixty chickens, that ought to 
make him smile. And you know he can make 
trouble enough in the ’Sociation if he stays 
ugly. Seemed pleased enough ’bout the order 
and promised them here by noon, all dressed 
and ready! An’ by gum, he ain’t come!” 

“Poor Luce!” replied his wife; “supper 
’thout chicken! Folks’ll think she don’t 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 179 

know nothin’ ’bout gettin’ up a spread ! And 
after the way you’ve bragged about her all 
up and down this country!” 

‘‘And with good reason! You’ll see! 
Luce’ll manage! She’s as smart as she is 
pretty — and that’s a lot!” But Jacob’s 
knotted forehead betrayed him in spite of his 
cheerful words, as he kept watching the road 
with ever-increasing animosity toward Jared 
Coombs. “Lucy ’ll manage!” he kept re- 
peating to himself; “watch her while she 
goes ’round ’mong the folks! She’s keepin’ 
cool, chicken or no! And just to think all 
she’s got done a’ready, over yonder!” 

And never a word of credit did Jacob give 
to a slim young woman who was directing, 
with a Napoleonic power of organization, 
some twenty pairs of unaccustomed hands 
to carry through the afternoon’s campaign. 
If Jacob had forgotten Elise, Elise from 
time to time sent an aggrieved thought in 
his direction. “The next time I’ll manage 
my chickens myself!” she said to Martha 


i8o THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

Beardsley and Myra Drum, her chief assist- 
ants. 

Three o’clock came, and still no Jared 
Coombs, so that the president had hard work 
to conceal his preoccupation with the road, as 
at last he took his official stand behind the 
little table provided for him beneath the cen- 
tral elm tree. In a semicircle at his back 
sat the other officers, with one conspicuously 
empty seat. The terrace was black with 
people seated tier on tier as if on a grand 
stand, while farther down on the level lawn 
every tree shaded a compact group eager to 
hear. The Independent Farmers’ Associa- 
tion was very proud of taking itself and its 
business seriously, and the business of that 
afternoon was apples. 

There were old men present who had never 
dreamed there was so much to be said about 
apples. There were young men present who 
knew there was much more to say than was 
being said, and were eager to say it. There 
were papers and discussions that treated of 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE i8i 


apples all the way from root-tip to blossom, 
and from tree to middleman and market. 

But while most of the audience listened 
intently, a few of them did not ; for some of 
them were mothers to whom babies were a 
more instant preoccupation than apples, and 
some of them were babies who found sticky 
cookies even more absorbing. There were 
horses present, too, tied to every maple tree 
and fence paling, and they stamped from 
time to time and set rattling the lumbering 
farm carryalls. There were summer people 
there also in autos that halted at the edge of 
the crowd, and of these some chattered on in 
low tones, and others sat forward in their 
seats striving to hear what these farmers 
were saying, these stalwart men, awkward in 
their unaccustomed ‘‘store” suits, who not 
only had something to say about apples, but 
also knew how to say it in forcible English. 
On the whole, the audience gave pretty close 
attention through two warm August hours, 
but there was one man, who usually treas- 


1 82 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


ured every word uttered at his cherished 
I.F.A., who on that afternoon heard very 
little, and that man was the president, Jacob 
Simms. 

At five Jacob brought precipitately to a 
close a discussion of caterpillars. He had 
spied a figure in the road — one who trudged 
through the dust, wagonless, chickenless! 
Through the stir and confusion that followed 
the breaking-up of the meeting, five anxious 
persons made their way to the gate and fell 
upon Jared Coombs as he entered. 

^‘Where are the chickens.?” demanded 
Jacob. 

Back in Hallock’s barn, the other side of 
the river.” 

‘‘That’s three mile!” exclaimed Oily 
Holmes. 

And the river!” added Jared Coombs 
with an evil gleam in his eye. 

“ But what in kingdom come,” thundered 
Jacob, “are your chickens doing in Hallock’s 
barn, and you here, without ’em?” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 183 

‘‘Couldn’t fly across, could they, seein’ 
you ordered ’em dressed?” 

“What about the bridge?” 

“The roadmakers are fixin’ it; it’s down at 
both ends; can’t get no team across.” 

“How did you get across yourself?” 

“Walked across at the dam; the water’s 
low.” 

“And left the chickens!” 

“Could n’t cart them over the dam!” 

“Was n’t there no boat?” 

“Did n’t see none,” replied Jared Coombs 
doggedly. 

“Didn’t look!” grunted Oily Holmes; 
“and how many hours do you expect us to 
believe it took you to walk three mile? It 
took you five hours to walk three mile did it ? 
That’s kind of a slow story, Jared, and kind 
of a thin one, too, — kind of thin!” 

“It’s a very plain one, at any rate!” said 
Elise’s crisp voice. 

“But the chickens!” Lucy’s words came 
chokingly; her flower face was all tremulous 


1 84 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

with tears; she was the very picture of help- 
less consternation. ‘‘The chickens! Three 
miles away and across the river ! And it ’s five 
o’clock now! And I never heard of a supper 
in this country without chicken! If I had n’t 
sold all ours but the pullets, and if Jacob 
had n’t said — Oh, what shall we do! What 
shall we do! We can’t have supper without 
chicken! Jacob, we can’t have the supper!” 

“Come, come!” said Jared Coombs, “you 
must n’t go to feel bad, you know. A girl 
that undertakes a job like this, why, she 
must n’t get broke up when accidents hap- 
pen! That’s no way to do! What did I tell 
you, Jake Simms?” 

“Come, Luce,” murmured Jacob, “I was 
depending on you!” Then louder, “What 
you told me, Jared Coombs, won’t be a cir- 
cumstance to what I’m a-goin’ to tell you, 
pretty quick!” 

“Excuse me, gentleman, I think you have 
forgotten,” Elise remarked dryly, “that I 
am Lucy’s partner in this contract! Your 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 185 

supper will be served as promised — and 
there will be chicken!” 

With a quick gesture she indicated that 
three of them should follow her within the 
improvised fence of the right-hand lawn. Her 
eyes were blazing, ‘‘ I ’ll have those chickens 
if I have to go for them myself!” she cried. 

“You needn’t!” answered Oily Holmes; 
“give me just an hour!” The next instant 
they beheld his heels in the air as he swung 
himself right over the fence palings and right 
into the nearest spring wagon. 

“But an hour!” cried Lucy, — “a whole 
hour, and half an hour to cook them.” 

“Lucy,” said Elise, “whatever happens, 
you must n’t look or act or talk as if any- 
thing had gone wrong. You must n’t, truly, 
dear.” And she looked down upon her little 
partner with an air of maternal patience. 

“But,” Lucy continued, “the people! If 
we keep them waiting till half-past six, half 
of them will go home! What shall we do!” 

“Trust me to take care of the people, 


1 86 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


Lucy!” said Ernest suddenly. And he was off 
across the driveway to the opposite lawn as 
swiftly as Oily Holmes had gone. 

As Ernest’s figure, supple and free in his 
white linen suit, and contrasting sharply 
with the duskier, clumsier figures of the 
farmers, went flashing about among that 
crowd across the driveway, people ceased to 
stand peering hungrily across the barriers at 
the supper tables, and began to gather about 
this strange young man. Ernest’s eyes were 
shining bright; the manner that had won 
him popularity in far different companies 
came to his aid ; his voice rang out, and the 
younger men and older boys, eager for diver- 
sion, rallied to his direction. 

There was little for Elise to do at that 
moment except to wait. She went up to the 
pine grove, and thence watched as Ernest 
organized the contests of an impromptu field 
day as easily and quickly as if the pro- 
gramme had been prearranged. The crowd 
had been pushed back into a wide semicircle. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 187 

seated on the grass. In the center were 
Ernest and his swiftly selected helpers and 
umpires. The big watches went back into the 
pockets whence they had been drawn in im- 
patience at that mysterious delay of sup- 
per. Even the babies watched events with 
interest now, and tired mothers applauded 
even the clumsiest pole-vaulting and hurdle- 
races and hammer-throwing. Ernest’s own 
intense earnestness over the contests was 
contagious. People looked on absorbingly, 
and time was forgotten. 

To Elise, too much keyed up at that mo- 
ment to feel the weariness of all that past 
week of frantic work, the whole scene sud- 
denly grew unsubstantial. How naturally it 
had all seemed to come about, but how very 
strange it really was that she and Ernest 
should be just here doing just this! 

Just beyond Elise on the other edge of the 
pine grove, the usual guests of the afternoon 
were being served. Elise had left them to 
Martha Beardsley and Myra Drum, since on 


1 88 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


that afternoon the Independent Farmers’ 
Association was the important matter for the 
young proprietors. However, Elise had been 
careful to arrange the scene so that their 
more fashionable clientele might be able to 
see how prettily decorated were those long 
tables below on the lawn, and she had 
planned that they should see and smell, since 
they might not taste, the supper prepared 
for the LF.A. Lucy had recognized some of 
the afternoon’s guests as members of the 
Exton Tennis Club. Proud as she was of 
this day’s undertaking, Elise was a little 
glad that she herself had recognized no one. 

“ I should n’t mind, of course,” she thought 
to herself, ‘‘if any of our set turned up, not 
really mind — but it’s just as well that 
Raywood is forty miles away.” 

In that strange solitude that sometimes 
comes to one in the midst of a crowd, Elise’s 
thoughts ran on musingly, absorbingly, so 
that she did not feel that tense hour slipping 
by. “ I could never have borne this week if it 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 189 

hadn’t been for the work! I could never 
bear the suspense, to-day, if it were n’t for 
all this going on!” For Elise knew that, 
while she and Ernest had worked together 
side by side almost as one person for all that 
week, never in their lives had they been so 
far apart. Her yearning eyes seeking Er- 
nest’s had found them alert and aloof. When 
he thought himself unnoticed, Elise would 
see from time to time a feverish red mount in 
his brown cheeks. Never had he walked so 
light, erect, and free. His sister saw his eyes 
daily burning brighter with resolution — but 
what resolution? To go to his uncle and the 
career his uncle offered him, or to stay here 
to-day and somehow afterwards somewhere 
carve a career for himself? What Ernest 
meant to do Elise could not guess, and could 
not ask, for that word of his, ‘‘jealous,” 
choked her when she wanted to speak out 
and tell him the truth. 

At any rate, to-day was the twenty-eighth 
and Ernest had not gone to Raywood, but 


190 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

there was a train at eight that evening — did 
Ernest mean to take it? “He thinks I want 
him to go back to uncle and the bank and the 
old life/" whispered Elise, “and I don’t! I 
don’t! Not now! And the reason is,” — her 
eyes turned toward the old piazza, — “the 
reason is that she has made me love her!” 

Unconscious as a flower that any one 
should be thinking about her, Lucy had 
stolen away from the crowd to sit for a 
little while on the step by Robin’s knee be- 
neath the honeysuckle. He patted her head. 
“Lively doings, Lucy! Lively doings!” 

“Yes,” agreed Lucy, but wearily. 

“What ’s our young chap doing down there 
below?” 

“Sports, he calls it, to amuse the people 
while we’re waiting.” 

“Way he flies about, managing things, 
you ’d think he belonged here.” Then, after a 
pause, more quietly, “Yes, you’d think 
Ernest belonged here.” 

“ Why, he almost does, does n’t he, Robin ? ” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 19 1 

‘‘Does he, girlie?’’ 

“Oh, I suppose they’ll both go away when 
summer’s over.” 

“But we’ll still have you.” 

“Why, Robin, what a funny thing to say! 
How could I ever want to go away? I’m 
glad of all the money, but sometimes I think 
I ’ll be glad when everything’s all quiet again 
in the fall, — everything just the same again 
as it used to be.” 

“ So ’ll I — if it ever is again, as it used to 
be.” Then the low tone changed again 
sharply, “Hello, what’s made Elise go flying 
down to the fence corner?” 

Lucy sprang up, “Oh, it’s Oily! Oily at 
last with the chickens!” And in an instant 
she was off. 

“And time,” muttered Robin to his watch, 
— “high time, but folks haven’t noticed, 
thanks to Ernest!” Robin’s gaze traveled 
back to that left lawn, and his smile ex- 
pressed approval; “That’s a boy now! — 
unless, perhaps, Ernest is a man!” 


192 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

Fortunately if pans and cooks are all ready, 
it does not take very long to fry chicken. 
Fortunately, also, for Ernest’s powers of en- 
tertainment, there was a general exclama- 
tion of surprise at the time marked by the 
western sky when at last the Independent 
Farmers’ Association, men and wives, found 
itself being arranged in a trailing queue that 
headed toward the right-hand lawn. 

Just within the bricked walk of that lawn a 
fence had been improvised that, nodding 
with tall green branches, protected the green 
dining-room from the stares of the road. 
Across on the other side were placed at inter- 
vals high green screens of ferns and boughs 
that shielded each a cook and open-air fire or 
stove, from which the long tables could be 
readily served. 

Ernest, with his big tin money-box on a 
table at his side, took his stand at the gate of 
the leafy fence, and slowly the hungry line 
filed in to take their places at the tables. 

The LF.A. was accustomed to regard food 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 193 

as of more consequence than table decora- 
tion, but Elise, with a canny view to adver- 
tisement, had reckoned the impressiveness of 
her bright streamers of Virginia creeper, of 
the tiny pennants on the towering cakes on 
which Lucy had exhausted all the ingenuities 
of icing, of the gay little souvenirs into which 
she had deftly turned some rolls of crimson 
paper. And if the members of the LF.A. at 
first had eyes only for the festive color scheme 
of red and white, they soon found that the 
young caterers had not neglected the more 
substantial articles of the feast. If the dainty 
decoration of some of the platters made one 
shy of touching, they all proved delicious to 
the taste. Although the dishes were so good 
and the guests so hungry that the company 
became promptly voiceless, still some of them 
found time to note that the ease with which 
they were being served denoted, considering 
the improvised methods necessary, lively 
executive skill on the part of some one. So 
inconspicuous was Elise, keeping close as she 


194 the old DILLER PLACE 

did to the screens behind which were the 
cooks, — five of the most capable women of 
the countryside had been willing to come to 
“help Lucy,” — that only people behind 
the scenes knew to whom the credit of that 
supper belonged. Ernest, having finished his 
duties as cashier and having barred the gate, 
was pacing up and down the space between 
tables and fence, darting quick glances of 
oversight upon the waiters. 

As for Lucy, flushed and sweet and happy 
now, she moved about between the munch- 
ing lines, stopping every instant for greeting 
and congratulation, their little white-frocked 
hostess whom they all loved. Very little she 
resembled that moment the dismayed and 
helpless child whom Jared Coombs’s malice 
had nearly undone an hour or so earlier. 
Elise had an odd little smile of amusement 
and tenderness as she watched Lucy — dear 
little girl ; but she would never know what to 
do when the unexpected occurred ! Elise and 
Ernest had had to meet the unexpected very 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 195 

often, and Elise flattered herself that they 
generally met it rather well. 

The supper went merrily on. No one 
seemed to notice when the twilight browns 
began to dim the golden sunset glow. The 
light was still clear, however, and all ran 
smoothly. Elise’s tension of responsibility 
relaxed, and she began to feel how tired she 
was, and that feeling made her somehow 
want to be near her brother, little attention 
as he had been giving, during that past 
week, to Elise’s feelings, either physical or 
mental ! 

Elise found her way across to where Ernest 
was standing with his businesslike air of 
supervision, his back to the gate. Lucy 
joined them in a moment, and all three stood 
regarding their ten feasting tables. They 
knew that, in the driveway at their backs, 
autos and carriage loads of the summer folk 
from time to time drew up and paused a few 
moments to survey the scene before rolling 
on their way again, but the three were too 


196 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

much preoccupied to give these strangers a 
backward glance. 

‘‘Everything is all right, isn’t it?” said 
Lucy, slipping a happy little hand into 
Elise’s; “nothing has happened to spoil any- 
thing.” 

A loud and significant “ahem” at their 
backs made all three turn. Two autos had 
drawn close to the fence and the occupants 
were looking down over its branches. In the 
back seat of the first car sat a middle-aged 
lady and gentleman. The other machine was 
a light runabout occupied by two young 
people whose eyes were bright with mirth, 
a brother and sister, Eric and Juliet Poole. 
It was the lady in the first auto who spoke 
but not to the group within the inclosure, — 
to her husband, — 

“Hugh, was this what you brought me to 
see ? Do you mean — that the young people 
you told me about were — our own? ” 

“Well, Ernest,” said Mr. Cope, in a tone 
almost metallic with banter, “you did n’t 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 197 

appear today, so I thought I M look you up 
to find whether I might still expect you before 
midnight/’ 

The gray eyes, that from the time Ernest 
was a small boy had had power to take all 
his self-possession from him, had not at this 
moment lost that power, as well they saw ! 

‘‘Can nobody say how-doyou-do ? ” in- 
quired Mr. Cope’s silvery voice. 

Through all the whirl of Elise’s thoughts 
one kept sing-songing, “But we’re not doing 
anything wrong! We’re not! We’re not! 
Then what makes us act as if we’d been 
caught?” 

No one had seemed to notice Lucy, and 
Lucy had formed the habit of letting Elise act 
first. But now the green gate opened and the 
little white figure moved to the auto step. A 
little face, all glad welcome, was lifted to 
Mrs. Cope’s. “ I am so glad to see — Ernest’s 
aunt ! I have always been hoping that some 
day you would come back!” 

“And who — are — you?” Mrs. Cope 


198 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

forced her haughty voice to murmur, although 
her fingers closed irresistibly about the little 
hand placed in hers. 

The flimsy gate swung loose as Ernest 
sprang through it. 

“This,’’ he said, “is Miss Lucy Diller, 
Aunt Laura.” Then his eyes blazed at the 
mocking lights he seemed to see in the eyes 
above him, — his uncle’s, Eric’s, Juliet’s ! He 
looked straight into their faces as he added, 
“And all this summer I have been Miss 
Diller’s” — he was going to say “assistant,” 
but in pure bravado at that strange light in 
his uncle’s glance, he said — “Miss Diller’s 
hired man!” A pause, while Ernest’s eyes 
did not waver before the gray ones, “And 
Miss Diller’s hired man I expect to remain!” 


CHAPTER IX 


T he exaltation of defiance flamed on 
Ernest’s cheeks, defiance of his uncle, 
of his sister, and of that black-eyed girl in the 
other motor. Toward Juliet he now directed 
Lucy, towering over her, as if he were her 
champion against all the other five. 

“This is Miss Diller, Miss Poole,” he said, 
“and Mr. Poole. I think, you’ve met before, 
Lucy.” 

“ I remember,” said Lucy, lifting up to 
each her hand in welcome, and smiling her 
grave half-smile. Her eyes were lifted wide 
and clear to Juliet’s bright black ones. 

“Why did nobody ever bring me here 
before?” queried Juliet, gazing about her. 
“This is your home. Miss Diller?” 

“And Ernest’s and Elise’s, too, this sum- 
mer,” answered Lucy. 

“Lucky two! So this is where they’ve 


200 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

hidden away, is it? And Eric, you never 
told!” 

“ Ever hear anybody say I could n’t keep 
a secret?” inquired Eric. “Thank me for 
that, Ernest, me son!” 

“I don’t!” cried Ernest; “for you did tell 
one person!” 

Quickly Juliet interposed, “By the way, 
Ernest, there was once a tennis tournament 
you were to play with me.” 

“Juliet, I never once thought of it to this 
day!” 

“I don’t suppose you did,” replied Juliet; 
“it’s no matter.” Looking down at the boy 
and girl there, Juliet’s eyes were gentle, but 
her lips were twitching. 

Quick distress showed on Lucy’s forehead. 
“Oh, Miss Poole, I’m afraid it’s my fault 
that Ernest forgot. I’ve kept him so busy.” 

“Perhaps it is your fault,” answered Ju- 
liet, “but I’ll forgive you both.” She leaned 
lightly forward, “ Ernest, when I look at you, 
I believe you’ve actually grown!” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 201 

‘‘What did I tell you?’’ muttered Eric to 
her. 

“And what did I always tell you?” she 
flung back at him. 

Suddenly all five were staring at the com- 
pany within the inclosure, for the air had 
been tom by a mighty shout, a swelling, in- 
articulate roar. Then out sang Oily Holmes’s 
voice, “Oh, I say, folks, that’s no way to 
do it. Can’t nobody tell what you say. Let 
me start you.” He sprang out between the 
center tables, pumped his long arms up and 
down, and shouted, “One — two — three! 
Now! ’Rah-rah-rah! Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!” 

Elise’s hand touched Lucy’s arm, “You 
must go inside and make them a bow, dear.” 

Ernest held open the gate, “But, Elise,” 
Lucy besought, “you must come, too. You 
did it all!” 

“Lucy!” The shout rang again. 

“Come, Elise!” pleaded Lucy. 

“No, dear,” whispered Elise, “make your 
bow alone. You are the one they love.” 


202 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


So, flushed, and shy and glowing, Lucy 
stood within the green-gate portal, bowing, 
while all together the crowd within stood up, 
and, lifting their tumblers high, drank their 
Lucy’s health. 

Then came the surging forth through the 
gate, while the two autos were forced to move 
somewhat back where they might still ob- 
serve but not impede. Oily Holmes shoved 
his way to Elise, and spoke abruptly, 
“There’s plenty of us wanted to cheer for 
you and your brother as well as Lucy, but we 
did n’t quite dar’st, someway. I can tell you, 
folks thinks you two are all right, but some- 
how they’re scared to say so to city folks.” 

“Thank you,” said Elise; “I’m glad you 
said so, anyway.” 

There was some one else who realized 
Elise’s executive importance, for it was to 
her that Jared Coombs came to utter husk- 
ily, “I’ll just say, miss, that I’ll knock off 
half the price of them chickens ’n account 
of the inconvenience.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 203 

''I am very glad,” replied Elise, promptly 
accepting the sacrifice as just. 

But in Jacob Simms’s pride there was no 
room for any one but Lucy, and in his brag- 
gart mood he buttonholed so many people, 
demanding congratulation, that no one 
would have got home that night if Jacob’s 
wife had not managed to carry off Jacob 
himself. 

Before clambering into the great carryalls 
to go trundling home, the crowd swept up to 
the piazza to say good-bye to Robin, carry- 
ing with it Elise and Lucy. Ernest had 
promptly to resume his generalship of the 
afternoon if the clumsy carriages and impa- 
tient horses were to make their way safely 
to the open road from under the maples 
where they were so thickly moored. His 
voice rang out through the gathering dusk, 
and thanks to him there were no locked 
wheels, nor shying horses, nor any running 
over the sleepy toddlers waiting to be stowed 
away. 


204 the old DILLER PLACE 

Slowly and steadily the departing car- 
riages trickled away in a line, punctuated 
here and there by a visiting auto. Two cars, 
however, lingered. Mr. and Mrs. Cope had 
left theirs to the chauffeur while they moved 
about beneath the trees. Eric and Juliet 
still sat. 

“Shall we go up to the porch?” suggested 
Eric; “the reception up there seems to be 
nearly over.” 

“No indeed, we’ll go away.” 

“Oh, come! I guess not! I want to hear 
what ‘Uncle Hugh’ and the ‘kid’ will have 
to say to each other when there’s a lull. 
From the looks of ’em they can’t stay bottled 
up much longer!” 

Juliet cast him a glance of affectionate im- 
patience. “Sonny, nobody will hear what 
those two have to say to each other ! Things 
will be said to-night, but they are n’t our 
business. And it’s our business to clear out! 
Turn around. We’ll make a call on the 
Collys.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 205 

It was long before the last loitering guest 
had said good-bye to the group on the piazza 
and gone rattling home. Ernest was seated 
at his cashier’s table, and by the light of a 
lantern was counting the money in his tin box. 
Other lanterns were standing upon the long 
tables, or flickering red beyond them where the 
weary cooks were washing dishes. The eve- 
ning, however, was steadily brightening, for 
unobserved the great moon had stolen up 
behind the house until it sailed high and white 
above the chimney. Voices, low but steady, 
could be heard from the region of the stoves, 
together with the constant clinking of dishes. 
Voices murmured from the pine grove and 
from the piazza, and yet after all the noise 
and clatter of the afternoon the place seemed 
very still. In the high moonlight all the de- 
vastation of tramped lawns was wiped away, 
and all the daytime shabbiness of the old 
house disappeared. It stood great and stately 
upon its rounded knoll. The pine trees and 
the great spheres of box before the front steps 


2o6 the old DILLER PLACE 


cast slant black shadows. In the evening quiet 
you could hear once more the song of the 
pine-tops. Four people whom the chance of 
a June afternoon had brought here, felt once 
more all about them the peace of the old Dil- 
ler place. 

Within the shadow of the pine trees a man’s 
voice spoke. ‘‘And so it does remind you, 
Laura, of old times?” 

“Yes, to-night.” 

“It reminded me from the first minute. 
I wonder, Laura, whatever became of your 
old home, the farm?” 

“I don’t know. I never cared for it, of 
course, as Kate did. Not then.” 

“Now?” 

“Oh — I — to-night — I don’t know,” she 
answered uneasily. “Hugh, where are the 
children?” 

“The E. and E. ? Oh, somewhere about.” 

In gentle moments Mrs. Cope spoke of the 
two as “the children,” and Mr. Cope, as “the 
E. and E.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 207 

‘‘ Hugh, what are we going to do about it ? 

‘‘About what?’’ 

“The children! They like it here!” 

“ It is n’t very queer that Kate’s children 
should like it here, is it?” 

“But, Hugh, you know as well as I do 
we’ve both found out this summer that we 
can’t do without them!” Her voice was 
sharp with impatience. “I want to know 
what we can do to make them come back.” 

“We can’t make them! I’ve tried!” 

Mrs. Cope’s irritation deepened. “I mean 
of course, what can we do to make them 
want to come back!” 

“Oh, that!” Mr. Cope shrugged his shoul- 
ders. 

There was silence while the moonlight 
flooded lawn and road and meadow before 
them. 

“ Kate was such a home body!” Mrs. Cope 
said abruptly. 

“Exactly!” answered Mr. Cope enigmati- 
cally. 


208 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


Light voices interrupted them. Two girlish 
forms in white were threading their way to 
them through the dusk of the grove. 

All Mrs. Cope’s impatience sharpened the 
low tension of her voice. “Well, I don’t see 
how you can expect me to do anything to 
break off this affair of Ernest’s, when the 
little girl” — a quick, indrawn breath — 
“when the little girl is so like Kate!” 

Half an hour later, the little girl who was 
so like Kate was still chatting away to Kate’s 
sister. With resolution and tact Elise had 
drawn her uncle away to a far-away bench 
beneath a tree. She, too, at the end of the 
half-hour was still talking, while Mr. Cope 
had all along been strangely silent. 

“ So you see, uncle, it’s all just as I have 
explained. You and I and Ernest himself all 
knew what it meant when Ernest chose his 
own way, not yours ; when he said this even- 
ing that he’d stay here on the farm, with 
Lucy. We know what it means, giving up the 
bank, and all return to the old life, always. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 209 

Yet, uncle, — I have to be perfectly frank 
to-night, — I am glad Ernest chose as he did 
— glad ! Because — because Ernest was al- 
ways afraid of you, and now he’ll never be 
afraid of any one again. I ’d rather have Ern- 
est be like that ^ — a man ! — at any cost !” 

“As for Ernest’s sister,” murmured Mr. 
Cope, “she always was a man!” 

“No, uncle, no! Only a woman who must 
work either for money or for love! I must 
have one or the other! It was for both that 
I hoped to work, for Ernest!” 

“And now you don’t hope that?” 

“As to that, I’m only a sister; I never 
took that fact in fully, in my dreams — that 
some day there might be a — a Lucy!” 

“ So you do not feel yourself quite so neces- 
sary?” 

“ I am not necessary, uncle, to any one. I 
suppose I ’ve always wanted to be, wanted it 
too much! But, anyway, I can work!” 

“Here? At this?” 

“Oh, no. I think not. I’ll leave this to 


210 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


Lucy. I Ve proved to myself to-night what 
I can do, but Fm going to advise Lucy 
against these big things. She’ll get along very 
well next summer with the ordinary after- 
noon custom. She’s learned how to manage 
that.” 

“You taught her?” 

“Yes.” 

“And did you teach her other things?” 

“What things?” 

“That there might come a time, I suppose, 
when Miss Lucy might have to make an ap- 
pearance somewhere else than here.” 

“I have thought of that sometimes.” 
Then, after a silence, Elise’s voice grew low, 
intense. “And this is what I have thought, 
— that wherever Lucy goes she will carry 
peace with her, and that whomever she meets, 
no one will ever hurt her, because nobody 
ever could, you know. That is why — ” 

“That is why?” repeated Mr. Cope. 

“Why I wonder so why you do not see 
what she has done for Ernest.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE an 

“And if I do see?’^ 

“ If you had seen, you could not have made 
the bank conditional on his leaving here at 
once, for good — leaving Lucy!’’ 

“Is every one, then, so sure that I am not 
going to offer Ernest that position, and on 
this very night?” 

“Are you, uncle?” 

“Yes!” 

“But, oh, uncle, why?” 

“Because at last I respect him!” 

“Uncle!” 

“Well?” 

“Then — then — you do care for Ernest, 
at last. I wanted to make you!” 

“It was rather better, perhaps, that he 
should make me himself!” 

“Yes!” breathed Elise, “yes! It was!” 
Her face was radiant in the moonlight. She 
could not talk. After a moment she looked 
around at her uncle, who was watching her 
intently. It struck her that he appeared very 
tired. Her Aunt Laura, too, had looked at 


212 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


her, she remembered, worried and wistful, 
and not in the least imperious. 

There was an utterly new note of pleading 
in her uncle’s voice which caught at her heart. 
He tried to make his tone casual. “And there 
was another position I thought of offering to 
some one, a position of housekeeper, at a 
salary, I trust, adequate for perfect inde- 
pendence.” 

Elise turned a wondering face upon him. 

“Your aunt and I have been thinking a 
little of buying a house if we could find a 
housekeeper.” 

“But Aunt Laura — ” 

“Would get tired of it. Quite possibly. In 
fact, I would n’t risk it without a competent 
housekeeper.” 

“Do you want a home, uncle?” 

“Has there ever been anything I wanted 
more, Elise?” 

“And you want me as housekeeper, uncle ? ” 

“Yes, if you are willing to work for money 
— my money.” 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 213 

‘'And for love/’ whispered Elise. 

" If your aunt is to be contented in a home, 
Elise, a daughter in it will be necessary — 
necessary.” 

There was a pause before Mr. Cope added 
quizzically, while he gazed off to the far hill- 
line, " I Ve sometimes thought that in a house 
I might have had a disposition more — well, 
more comprehensible to young people.” 

"Oh, uncle” — Elise put out a hand trem- 
bling with her flooding sympathy — "I’ll 
come! At last I understand!” 

"It was about time, was n’t it, Elise?” 

A clear voice interrupted them. "I have 
been looking everywhere for you, Elise. 
May I trouble you to allow me a few moments 
alone with uncle, for I am afraid you will not 
like what I have to say more than you will, 
uncle, I fear.” 

An irrepressible hint of laughter in Elise’s 
quick "Good-bye, then.” 

"Sit down, my boy, and speak,” said Mr. 
Cope. 


214 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 

‘‘I’ll try to go straight to the point. I 
know you’ve always said I never could. The 
point is clear enough, anyway. I did n’t come 
to Raywood, to-day. I did n’t give up the 
life here. We both know what that means; 
that you wash your hands of me; that the 
bank business is all up ; that I ’m on my own 
feet now, for good and all. On your account, 
I ’m sorry.” 

“Not on your own account?” 

“No! But sorry I did n’t turn out as you 
wanted me to. I always used to want your 
respect more than anything. Perhaps you 
did n’t think so, but I did.” 

“And now you don’t want it?” 

“Now I want my own! In fact, I had to 
have it, when it came to the choice between 
you — and Lucy!” 

“You have made your choice!” 

“I don’t suppose you’ll ever understand, 
uncle, my feeling the way I do, about a coun- 
try girl.” 

“You seem to have forgotten, Ernest, that 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 215 

your Aunt Laura was a country girl when I 
married her. She and your mother were coun- 
try girls when I first knew them, on an old 
farm, not unlike this. In fact, both in June 
and now this place has taken me back half 
a lifetime.’’ 

^‘Oh, then, uncle, you do understand a 
little in spite of your giving me up ! Why, I 
can’t explain to you, uncle, how this place 
has taken hold of me this summer! It’s so 
peaceful, so homelike; and Lucy, though she 
was n’t born here, is just as if she’d grown 
right up out of the ground, out of the quiet- 
ness and the peace of it, like the flowers. 
She’s opened my eyes without knowing it any 
more than a baby. So that every day I’ve 
seemed to be seeing things and seeing things 
until I could hardly stand it any longer. I was 
feeling like that when I came to see you last 
week. And you asked me to give up this old 
farm — and Lucy! And you see I could n’t, 
not even for you, uncle!” 

‘‘What do you intend to do, Ernest?” 


216 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


don’t know exactly. I only know that 
I shall go to work somewhere, at something. 
And I know I shall work like a tiger, and 
succeed. And then, some day, I ’ll come back 
for Lucy. For you know, uncle, Lucy is n’t 
like me ; she is n’t grown up yet. She does n’t 
feel the way I do ! ” 

“She will wait for you, you think?” 

“ Somehow I can’t help feeling as if Robin 
and the old house will keep her for me until 
I come back.” 

A voice Ernest did not know at all an- 
swered “I hope they will, my boy!” 

“Uncle, uncle! Oh, please, I don’t under- 
stand! What do you mean, uncle?” 

“Well, I mean among other things that 
the position in the bank is open to you when- 
ever you wish.” Still the new voice! Was it 
the same that once had been so rasping? 
“Also I mean that I had promised myself 
never to give you that work until you had 
found some other for yourself and proved you 
could do it. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 217 

“And further, I mean that I could n’t re- 
spect you so long as you were afraid of me, 
so I confess I tried pretty hard to make you 
afraid because I wanted to respect you, and 
it was n’t until this summer that you proved 
yourself game, Ernest! 

“So things went along as you know, until 
college was over and you were waiting for me, 
and I was waiting for you. Ernest, do you 
believe that there were ever four people ever 
more bored than we were when we chanced in 
here on that afternoon in June? I’ve said 
that the place took me back to my boyhood. 
And I watched its effect on you that day. I 
said to myself that if, after all the various 
kinds of spoiling we’d all managed to give 
you all your life, if, after it all, you could still 
see all there was to be seen in the face of that 
little blue calico girl — And then you did 
see, and did come back here, and when I knew 
I put you to the final test, all because I felt 

— and do you understand me now, Ernest ? 

— that not until I had proved you could I 


218 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


let myself feel toward you, at last, as fathers 
feel towards sons!’’ 

It was a strange evening, that, on the old 
Diller place, — an evening when more than 
one pair of eyes was opening to wide new 
vision, and for more than one person new 
hopes were showing vistas beneath the moon- 
lit reaches of the quiet old trees. 

Beneath the pines the lady seated by 
Lucy’s side on the rustic bench had been so 
long silent that Lucy said at last, ‘‘ I ’m afraid 
you’re very tired.” 

‘‘No, not now. It rests me here.” 

“I think it does rest people here,” Lucy 
answered; “I’ve watched them. And I re- 
member how I felt when I came. I was just 
a little girl, and so tired 1 I wish it would al- 
ways be for everybody a happy place, the 
way it’s been for me.” 

Mrs. Cope gazed off over the tranquil 
stretch of meadow, murmuring, “But to- 
morrow it will all begin again!” 

- But some one had stolen up behind them. 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 219 

Elise’s two hands, as she stood, were clasped 
about her aunt’s neck, as she said, ‘‘Auntie, 
I’m thinking of coming back to you if you 
think you want me!” 

It was some minutes later that Ernest and 
Mr. Cope joined them, and all presently 
went walking up toward Robin on his porch. 
The old twins had been sent to bed. Robin 
was growing lonely. He was very curious 
over what was happening down below there, 
so curious that he thought of bursting into 
a rage that would bring his stageful of actors 
nearer to his view, but his summoning cane 
grew quiet in a pensive hand. He would know 
everything soon enough, he thought. 

As on that June afternoon, Elise and Er- 
nest found themselves together behind the 
rest of the group, — 

“Elise!” cried Ernest breathlessly, “it’s 
all right, everything! The bank! Uncle, too! 
It seems he’s not been angry! He’s glad, 
glad!” Then, as Elise could not speak, his 
voice changed, “ So, Elise, there ’s only you to 


220 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


be sorry that I chose not to give up — things 
here!’’ 

Ernest, stand still a minute ! Look at me I 
It’s light enough to see plainly. Can’t you 
see that to-night I ’m the happiest, proudest 
sister in the whole world 

There was the seal of an understanding 
never again to be broken between brother and 
sister in Ernest’s words that came at last, 
‘‘Yes, sis, I seel” 

When they reached the piazza, before Mr. 
Cope and old Robin had settled to one of those 
chats that were to enliven so many hours 
for both of them in after days, Ernest sud- 
denly was aware of the empty auto standing 
below the terrace, while the patient chauffeur 
nodded in his seat. 

“Uncle, Lucy has never been in a car ? May 
I turn Perry out and take her? We’ll be 
back in a jiff.” 

Robin’s old eyes watched the whirring 
motor which, on the very spot where once, 
on a rain-darkened morning, a battered cir- 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 221 


cus wagon had brought him Lucy, now re- 
ceived her and carried her off down the maple 
avenue, through the gate, along the wan- 
dering road, on and on, out of Robin’s 
sight. 

Robin heard Mr. Cope’s words, his own 
words answered, but all the time his thoughts 
went with Lucy, by Ernest’s side, in the 
great red car that was carrying her away, so 
far. 

‘‘Haven’t they been gone some time.?” 
Robin had asked at last. 

Mr. Cope peeped at his watch and smiled. 
“Not more than forty-five minutes. And 
Ernest can always be trusted to take good 
care of her.” 

“That’s true, now,” answered Robin, 
while his thoughts followed the red car far, 
far into the future. 

It seemed a weary time that night before 
the boy and girl came back, before the others 
had all gone away, back to Raywood, up to 
bed, leaving Robin and Lucy alone at last 


222 THE OLD DILLER PLACE 


to the good-night talk without which neither 
of them was ever willing to go to sleep. 

The honeysuckle swayed in fairy tendrils 
above Lucy’s head as she sat there on the 
step, all white in the moonlight. 

‘‘It’s been a big evening, Robin, hasn’t 
it, so big ! I don’t think I ever want to do 
anything so big as this supper again, and Elise 
thinks we need n’t. She’s sure I can make 
money enough in the summer with just the 
afternoon people. I’m glad. I ’d rather never 
have more people than I can make feel at 
home. Elise does n’t even want the Exton 
Tennis Club now. She says she’d rather go 
back to her aunt and uncle, because they want 
her so. Robin, is n’t it all different now, from 
June? They all sounded so cross then, and 
now they all seem happy with each other. 
I ’m so glad they’re happy, are n’t you? ’ ” 

“Did you and Ernest go far and have a 
lot to say?” 

“We went far enough to see the Raywood 
lights up the valley. And talk, yes! It was the 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 223 

first minute I ’d had to ask Ernest how much 
money he’d taken in to-night, and I got so 
excited trying to reckon the cost of the food, 
and of the extra help, and everything, that 
we never did get through all the adding and 
subtracting in our heads, without a pencil. 
And we don’t know yet how much we 
made ! ” 

‘‘I can wait till morning for that.” 

Lucy snuggled against his knee. ‘‘It’s all 
yours, anyway, Robin, all my half, and all I 
made before, and all I’ll make before the 
season closes. Oh, Robin, it’s been a big 
summer, has n’t it.^” 

“Most too big for me, sometimes.” 

“You are n’t sorry, are you, that you let 
me try to make some money ? For I ’ve made 
it, Robin, and we don’t have to sell one inch 
of the farm. Jacob can’t have the lower pas- 
ture, Robin; the old place is safe! Aren’t 
you glad I can make money?” 

“I never meant you to, Lucy; I wanted to 
take care of you.” 


224 the old diller place 

‘'But if I wanted to take care of you? I 
am always going to take care of you, Robin ! ” 

“Perhaps some day you’ll find somebody 
else you want to take care of, Lucy.” 

He felt her cheek grow warm against the 
hand in his lap; with the other he patted her 
hair. 

“No,” she whispered, “I want to stay 
here with you, at home, always, safe ! Before, 
there was the circus!” 

He stroked the bowed head. “All the same, 
my girlie, when you’re ready I think there’ll 
be somebody ready with whom you’ll be 
safe!” 

Lucy did not move. Below the step a 
cricket, presaging autumn, creaked shrilly. 
The soft night air was fragrant with box and 
mignonette. The great clock within ticked 
steadily, and the high moon flooded the tran- 
quil lanes with light. Upstairs, in the old 
rooms that had given the strangers such 
welcome, Elise and Ernest were sound asleep. 

In the midnight hour the old house that 


THE OLD DILLER PLACE 225 

for generations had held to its heart those 
who were young, those who were old, laid 
its mute caress on the two who loved it so, 
and while his hand upon her head blessed his 
little girl’s future, old Robin began, very 
low, to whistle, ‘‘Mine ain countree.” 


(Ct)e BitJcrjsiDe 

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 






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